Franco Raggi is an Italian architect and industrial designer. Throughout his career, he has designed buildings, event layouts, exhibitions, books, rooms, and articles for world-renowned international design companies, such as Artemide, Kartell, and Moretti.
Franco graduated in Architecture from Milan Polytechnic in 1969, and in the same year started work for Nizzoli Associati. From 1971 to 1975 he was editor of Casabella magazine, and from 1977 to 1980, the editor-in-chief of Modo design magazine, which he headed until 1983.
In 1973, he orchestrated the first critical exhibition of Italian Radical Design on behalf of the Internationales Design Zentrum (IDZ) in Berlin. Between 1975 and 1977, he was coordinating secretary for the Visual-Architecture Arts Section at the Biennale in Venice. He was manager of the “Raccolta del Design” section at the Triennale in Milan between 1979 and 1980, organising various exhibitions in the early eighties.
Franco also has a longstanding partnership with FontanaArte. In the early eighties, under the artistic direction of Gae Aulenti, and in partnership with Daniela Puppa, he designed the layouts for major events featuring the famous Italian lighting firm. Since the late eighties he has created numerous successful fixtures for FontanaArte, including Velo (1988-89), Flûte (1999), and Drum (2005).
As an architect, he has planned retail areas and showrooms, corporate headquarters (including the new Milan offices of Gianfranco Ferré), clinics, and research centres. He has taught at the Faculties of Architecture at Pescara University and at the ISIA in Florence. Since 1995 he has coordinated the Department of Architecture at the IED in Milan.
