Hans Hollein

Hans Hollein was born in Vienna in 1934, studied there and in Chicago and Berkeley, and made his name with his first commission, the Retti candle shop of 1965. His buildings include the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach and the Haas Haus in Vienna; he won the Pritzker Prize in 1985 and directed the 1996 Venice Architecture Biennale. He died in 2014.

For Poltronova he designed the Mitzi sofa in 1981, a sofa with a woman’s name that pairs soft upholstery with a rigid structure, the curve of its backrest set against the straight line of its base.