Cini Boeri: Milanese designer of elegance and verve
Against the backdrop of Milan Design Week 2025, More Space looks at the influence of Milanese architect and designer, Cini Boeri, who passed away at the age of 96 on the day of the 2020 Compasso d’Oro award ceremony, the highly coveted prize she received twice – once for the Strips sofa in 1979 and again in 2011 for her career as a designer of originality, innovative thinking and a trailblazer for women. Sixty years after the designer launched onto the design scene in Milan, her ideas on furniture and living continue to leave an impact on the world.
The revolutionary Milanese architect and designer Cini Boeri was one of the first women to graduate in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano and would leave a lasting impact on the world of design. Portrait c/o Arflex.
The classic Botolo chair, high version, by Cini Boeri for Arflex, here and below. Photo c/o Arflex.
The 1967 Bobo chair designed for Arflex, was the first piece Cini Boeri worked on with the furniture house and it would begin her lifelong collaboration with the group. Photo c/o Arflex.
The Strips bed designed by Cini Boeri in 1972 for Arflex (here and right) has features not unlike a sleeping bag, with a zipped cover that can be opened and closed to conceal the bed beneath and softly quilted upholstery for warmth. Photos c/o Arflex.
‘Joy is inherent to the act of designing, to the proposal of the new and to its creation with responsibility and passion… Being a woman means thinking about design with a female sensibility in its aesthetic, functional and qualitative aspects, as well in terms of the experience it will produce and how it will change over time.’
Cini Boeri, MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts
A formidable architect and designer of Milanese elegance, it is her clarity of form and functionality over aesthetics that defines Cini Boeri’s houses, interiors and furniture. Her design signature draws from two of Italy’s defining modernists who were also close collaborators: the towering Gio Ponti, architect, industrial designer, teacher and founder of Domus magazIne, where she began her architecture internship, then Marco Zanuso, and his language of sculptural minimalism, where she shaped her career and began her longtime relationship with Italian furniture brand Arflex just as the manufacturer began its international push.
The first piece designed by Boeri for Arflex was the Bobo armchair in 1967. Bobo, Bobolungo and Boboletto marked a huge departure from the traditions of timber framed furniture. It was made of non-deformable polyurethane covered in fabric, the external form creating the internal structure that would begin a new direction in furniture design in tune with designers like Verner Panton and Superstudio, and the groundbreaking MoMA exhibition in New York, 'The New Domestic Landscape'. The following year Strips, a modular sofa (then bed and sofa bed) designed in 1968, made the history of the Arflex brand. Awarded the Compasso d'Oro prize in 1979, Strips is now an iconic best seller, thanks to its versatility and practicality characterised by a removable cover.
It was 1963, after more than a decade working with Marco Zanuso, when Boeri opened her studio Cini Boeri Architetti on Via Donizetti in Milan. Here she produced architecture, interiors, exhibitions and furniture for clients in Italy and beyond, from the bold Casa Bunker on the island of Sardinia completed in 1967, to the revolutionary 1971 Serpentone (big snake) sofa for Arflex, its endless length focusing on a completely new way to lounge underpinned by Boeri’s experimentation and research.
A development of Bobo and Strips, the Serpentone ‘continuous sofa’ was designed to be sold by the metre. Made of polyurethane foam, its modules were placed side-by-side and glued together, the 370mm injection moulded sections of concave and convex curves designed to be folded up when not in use. When complete it was launched in the Arflex showroom at via Borgogna in Milan, announcing the brand’s place as one of Italy’s furniture risk takers. After the exhibition it was divided into sections and donated to museums around the world, marking a shift in how industrial design was viewed by the art world.
‘I am motivated by the enthusiasm that has always accompanied my work, and the desire to seek, create, and a point to a more natural and simple way of living.’
Cini Boeri, The Human Dimension of a House
Houses, interiors and furniture by Cini Boeri ultimately focused on designing better ways of living. In her manifesto ‘The Human Dimension of the House,’ the designer wrote about the human side of architecture and the importance of customised solutions beyond standardisation, an idea that she explored in all of her designs for Arflex. It was her elevated approach to spatial literacy and openness to new domestic typologies; materials that pushed the boundaries and traditions of furniture manufacture; and changes in social and cultural identity, that are the foundations of Boeri’s six decades of work. For Boeri riding the wave of change transforming the domestic interior was ‘the desire to seek, create, and point to a more natural and simple way of living.’
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