Cesare Leonardi – Experimental Design Between Object, Nature and Space

Italian architect and designer Cesare Leonardi (1935–2021) crossed the boundaries between individual disciplines throughout his career. He designed furniture and lighting, planned buildings and parks, took photographs, painted and created sculptures. Together with Franca Stagi, he developed experimental design objects in the 1960s and 70s, including the Dondolo and Nastro seating designs and the distinctive Jeep lamp. After their collaboration ended, Leonardi continued his research into modular furniture and new systems of spatial and landscape planning. What connects his diverse body of work is a curiosity about construction, materials and the question of how one idea can become a system offering a wide range of possibilities.

From Studying Architecture to His Own Studio in Modena

Cesare Leonardi enrolled at the Faculty of Architecture in Florence in 1956. There, he attended classes taught by figures including Adalberto Libera, Ludovico Quaroni and Leonardo Savioli, under whom he graduated in 1970. As early as 1963, he had opened a studio in Modena together with Franca Stagi. Until 1983, the two worked on projects spanning industrial design, architecture and landscape design.

This connection between different scales became characteristic of Leonardi’s work. A chair, a lamp, a building or a park were not isolated tasks for him. Again and again, he explored how form emerges through material, movement, use and spatial relationships.

His enthusiasm for experimentation was particularly evident in furniture design. Together with Franca Stagi, Leonardi developed seating objects made from fibreglass-reinforced plastic, including Nastro, Eco and Dondolo. The Dondolo rocking chair from 1967 is now part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Its elongated, continuous form uses the possibilities of plastic to combine seat, backrest and rocking movement within a single sculptural body.

What Defines Cesare Leonardi’s Design?

Cesare Leonardi’s work is characterised by remarkable openness. Rather than adopting an unchanging personal design language, he developed individual methods for different tasks. His collaborative work with Franca Stagi produced both flowing plastic forms and technically expressive metal objects. Later, he explored modular wooden furniture, spatial structures and theoretical systems of landscape planning.

A recurring element, however, is his interest in objects and structures that can do more than their first appearance suggests. Movement, adaptability and combination play an important role in many of his works. After 1983, for example, Leonardi developed his Solidi, a flexible modular furniture system, as well as the Struttura Reticolare Acentrata (SRA), a method for planning green spaces and larger territories.

Photography, too, was far more than a parallel artistic activity for him. With his camera, he not only documented finished results, but observed structures, compared forms and developed foundations for new design ideas. After the end of his professional career, he increasingly devoted himself to photography, painting and sculpture.

Furniture Between Plastic, Movement and a New Freedom of Form

The furniture designs created jointly by Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi are among the best-known examples of their experimental approach. Fibreglass-reinforced plastic, in particular, gave them the opportunity to move beyond assembling furniture from traditional individual components such as legs, a seat and a backrest.

Instead, the form could be conceived as one continuous body. This idea is particularly evident in Dondolo: the piece of furniture supports the user while simultaneously creating the movement required of a rocking chair. The construction is not concealed beneath a decorative shell—the form itself performs the function. The Museum of Modern Art now holds Dondolo in its Department of Architecture and Design.

The significance of these designs extends beyond their striking appearance. They document a period of Italian design in which new plastics and industrial processes gave designers the freedom to rethink traditional furniture types.

The Architecture of Trees – Nature as a Subject of Research

One of Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi’s most extraordinary projects began with a fundamental question: How can a park be planned without a precise understanding of the spatial characteristics of trees?

This question developed into a study lasting around two decades. Leonardi and Stagi, together with members of their studio, photographed and measured trees in Italy and other parts of Europe. These observations formed the basis for precise drawings at a scale of 1:100. Published in 1982, L’Architettura degli Alberi brings together 374 representations of 211 species, as well as detailed drawings and information on origins and site conditions.

Here, the tree does not appear as a decorative element added retrospectively between buildings and paths. It becomes a spatial component in its own right, defined by size, form, shade and seasonal change. This intensive research also informed the studio’s joint landscape projects. One of its most important realised works is Parco Amendola in Modena, which opened in 1981.

The Jeep Lamp – Mechanics Become Design

In 1969, Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi designed the Jeep lamp for the Italian manufacturer Lumenform. More than five decades later, the design still appears remarkably distinctive. Its construction is not concealed, but deliberately defines its appearance.

The current table lamp combines a sturdy base, a movable lamp body and a large reflector with an openly visible joint mechanism. Wing nuts and springs do not merely perform a technical function; they also shape the character of the object. The lamp head can be adjusted by hand to the desired position, while the distinctive Fresnel lens creates its characteristic lighting effect.

This direct relationship between construction and appearance convincingly connects the Jeep with Leonardi’s wider body of work. Nothing needs to disappear behind a decorative surface. Movement remains understandable as movement, and mechanics remain visible as mechanics. The lamp derives its personality from the way it functions.

Antifer is bringing the design back today in collaboration with Archivio Leonardi. The current reissue preserves the characteristic lines and construction principles of the original and is available as both a wall lamp and table lamp.

From the Shared Studio to New Systems

The professional collaboration between Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi ended in 1983. Leonardi subsequently developed his own experimental systems with increasing intensity. His Solidi explored the possibilities of modular furniture, while the Struttura Reticolare Acentrata emerged as a planning method for green spaces and larger territorial contexts.

This later work demonstrates why Cesare Leonardi is so difficult to assign to one single design movement. He was not solely a furniture designer, architect or artist. His work emerged precisely from the transitions between these fields.

Whether a curved plastic chair, an adjustable designer lamp, a photographic study of trees or a spatial system of organisation, Leonardi was interested in the possibilities that arise when familiar tasks are reconsidered from the ground up.

Designer Lights by Cesare Leonardi