Umberto Riva

Background

Umberto Riva (1928-2021) was a master of light and a versatile designer whose work covered urban planning, architecture, landscape, interiors, and the design of lamps and furniture. He was a painter before he became an architect, and ten years passed before he finished his architecture degree. A pupil of Carlo Scarpa, he took part in a Le Corbusier exhibition at MAXXI and exhibited at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Signature Style

Riva kept an artisanal dimension in making both architecture and design, and his projects began with drawing: pencil sketches of an authentic, poetic and essential research. His houses show an almost obsessive avoidance of right angles, and he held that a form earns its place first through the appropriate use of material and then through the formal and visual culture its designer carries.

Notable Works

Among his best-known buildings are Casa Frea, the European Library in Milan, the Church of San Corbiniano in Rome and the restoration of Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua. He designed the E63 lamp in 1963 for an open competition, and Tacchini re-released it in 2017.

Legacy

He produced numerous lighting and furniture projects for major Italian design brands. The Tacchini Edizioni line includes E63 and other designs by Riva, among them rugs and objects, and carries forward his slow, considered way of working.