Biography of Richard Sapper

Master of industrial design

Richard Sapper was a Munich-born, award-winning industrial designer and professor. The design studio he founded in Stuttgart in 1970 is still active after his death in 2015. The multi-award-winning designer received the Compasso d'Oro eleven times alone, in addition to other international honors. His designs are represented in the world's design museums, including Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

From Munich to Milan

Richard Sapper was born in Munich on May 30, 1932. He spent his childhood in Stuttgart before returning to Munich after graduating from high school, where he completed his degree in business administration in 1956. Sapper immediately entered the world of work - not in the field of business administration, however, but in the field of industrial design. Sapper gained his first design experience at Daimler Benz when the exterior mirror for the legendary Mercedes 300 SL was being developed. However, the now 26-year-old did not last long at "Daimler", as the people of Stuttgart like to say. In 1958, Sapper's path led him to Milan, Italy. After working in Rio Ponti's design studio and in the development department of the La Rinascente department store chain, the following year he began a collaboration with Marco Zanuso, an Italian architect and industrial designer, which would last for around two decades.

Form and function

Sapper, who has always had a penchant for merging form and function using the latest technologies, is working with Zanuso on a series of developments for Brionvega and Siemens. The duo developed a series of televisions and radios for both the Italian and the German electronics company. In 1972, they designed a portable living unit for the exhibition 'Italy, the New Domestic Landscape', which was shown at Museum of Modern Art in New York.

New transportation systems

In the same year, Sapper organized a study group with the Italian architect Gae Aulenti to look at new transport systems to relieve congestion in city centres. This theme was finally developed further for an exhibition at Triennale XVI in 1979. For Triennale XIV, which took place from June 23 to July 28, 1968 at the Palazzo dell'Arte in Milan, Sapper had already conceived an exhibition on the limits of technology together with Pio Manzu and William Lansing Plumb

Detour into the automotive industry

In the 1970s, Sapper worked as a consultant for FIAT. Here he worked on the development of test vehicles. At Pirelli, the Italian tire manufacturer founded in 1872, he worked on pneumatic structures and designed the concept of a car with a flexible skin to absorb the impact of collisions.

Personal Computer

From 1980, Sapper worked as a Senior Industrial Design Consultant for IBM and later for Lenovo, where he oversaw the design of the company's personal computers worldwide. He designed the very first ThinkPad laptop in 1992 and a long series of models that followed.

From A to T

In addition to design, Sapper's main interest is technology and he manages to implement technically complex problems like no other. He developed and designed a wide range of products in this manner: from ships and cars to computers and electronics, furniture, lights and kitchen appliances. Some of his most notable designs are the chair K1340 for Kartell (1964), the Algol television set (1964) and the TS 502 radio (1965) for Brionvega, the Grillo telephone for Siemens (1965), the Tizio lamp for Artemide (1972), the Microsplit stopwatches for Heuer (1976), the 9090 espresso machine (1978) and the 9091 kettle (1983) for Alessi, the Nena folding chair for B&B Italia (1984), the ThinkPad laptop series for IBM and Lenovo (from 1992), the SapperChair (1979) and the monitor arm collections (2010) for Knoll, the foldable Zoombike for Elettromontaggi (2000), the Halley work lamp for Lucesco (2005), which has been produced by Stilnovo since 2023, and the Tosca stacking chair for Magis (2007). Many of these design classics are still produced today.

Honors and awards

It is therefore no wonder that Richard Sapper has received numerous awards for his designs and is represented in the collections of international museums. In 1988, Sapper became an honorary member of the Royal Society of Arts and in 2001 a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. In addition to international awards, the Designer was honored by the German Design Council for his life's work in 2009. A year later, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina and, in 2012, the Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. This was followed in 2014 by the Compasso d'Oro from the Associazione Design Industriale for his life's work.

Professor at international faculties

But Sapper does not keep his knowledge to himself, he passes it on to design students all over the world. He teaches at Yale University, USA, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, the Art Academy in Stuttgart, Germany, the Domus Academy in Milan, Italy, the Central Academy for Art and Design in Beijing, China, the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the Royal College of Art in London, England. With such an impressive CV, there doesn't seem to be much that Sapper will miss out on in his lifetime. Perhaps turning down Steve Jobs' offer to head Apple's design department was the only thing the Munich native regretted when he died in Milan on December 31, 2015. Perhaps.

Sapper's legacy

Sapper's influence and recognition, however, extend far beyond his impressive career and his legacy lives on in his iconic designs. At TAGWERC, you can immerse yourself in the world of design and experience a fascinating journey through the life and work of Richard Sapper.