Kazuhide Takahama for Gavina

KAZUHIDE TAKAHAMA (Nobeoka-Japan, 1930 - Bologna, 2010) for Gavina.
Pair of tables "Gea", c. 1960.
Painted aluminum.
Measurements: 54 x 53 x 42 cm.
The design of "Gea" moves away from the traditional table understood as a surface supported by legs; here, the structure is continuous, almost sculptural, generating an autonomous object that dialogues with the space from its resounding but silent presence. The lateral opening introduces a functional dimension, storage or visual lightness, without breaking the formal purity, in an operation that recalls the expressive economy of Japanese thought.
Kazuhide Takahama Japanese architect and designer. Born in 1930, he studied architecture in Tokyo and after graduating he joined Kazuo Fujioka's studio. In 1957 he went to Italy to supervise the architectural layout of the pavilion with which Japan participated for the first time in the XI Triennale di Milano, where he met the designer and businessman Dino Gavina (1922-2007) with whom he began a professional collaboration that would last a lifetime. Consequently, in 1964 he moved to Bologna and went to work as a designer of furniture and lamps in the factory of San Lazzaro.in 1968 Gavina sold his company Gavina SPA to Knoll International, with its Foligno plant designed by Achille Castiglioni , and founded together with Maria Simoncini (1927-2010) the manufacturer Simon International (later acquired by Cassina ) and a year later the exhibition and commercial center bearing the name of Marcel Duchamp was inaugurated in Bologna with the participation of the famous Dadaist painter and photographer Man Ray .In these new offices, Takahama was able to collaborate with the famous architect and designer Carlo Scarpa and in the following years he developed an intense professional activity that led him to the creation of various types of furniture and lamps, which still constitute so many works of art, always characterized by a great simplicity and formal cleanliness and very often rigorous as Zen compositions.His colleagues said he was so quiet that they called him "the man of stone", but his presence was clearly perceptible.Takahama continued to develop his activity as a designer until his death in 2010.