A Lesson with A G Fronzoni

The current relevance of a great teacher. This book is an act of gratitude from student to teacher and also an invitation to others to contribute to the reconstruction of a story of human and professional experience of the highest value and of great current relevance. Ester Manitto, re-working the materials, notes, and written work of her student career permits us to enter the world of A G Fronzoni’s workshop school, founded in Milan in 1982 and active until 2001.

The workshop school trained a multitude of young people from all walks of life and parts of the world, directing them towards the practice of continual research into the essence of form in life, nature, art, architecture, and design, and a respect for learning by doing. A school of both craft and concept, directed at the training and critical awareness of the individual, it set itself the difficult educational objective of combining the strategies and techniques of design with lifestyle choices.

This book is not an anthology but a reasoned collection of notes accompanied by a dialogue between Ester Manitto and the design historian Gabriele Oropallo, by a memory from A G Fronzoni’s daughter Elena Lia, and from a text by his former student, architect Claudio Silvestrin and with a careful literary support from the architect and designer Enrico D. Bona. It is enriched by the work of Fabrizio Cicconi, Alessandro Fornili, Giuliano Grossi, Armin Linke, and Stefano Malobbia who donated their photographic evidence.