Born in Turin in 1928, Morello soon left his background of industrial chemistry and his career as a manager at Olivetti and at La Rinascente, to devote his time to industrial design. In 1954 he was director of the Compasso d’Oro and, two years later, he was among the founders of ADI, of which he was president from 1992 to 1998.
After teaching at the Faculty of Architecture in the Milan Polytechnic and at the University of Virginia, in 1995 (and up till 1997) he resumed for a few issues the publication of the journal Stileindustria, which had been founded and edited by Alberto Rosselli for nine years, from 1954 to 1963.
“One of the functions we would like to entrust to Stileindustria is that of fostering a reciprocal understanding of the languages spoken by diverse professions and trades: we would like to make it a magazine instrumental in getting other magazines read”, he wrote in the editorial of the first new number. “Stileindustria”, he continued, “will be providing a platform from which to explore with every appropriate tool, and not separately, the problems of consistently translating projects into reality”.
President of ICSID from 1997 to 2001, since 2000 Augusto Morello had also been president of the Milan Triennale. In 2001 he was awarded the Compasso d’Oro career prize.