Farewell to Ennio Brion (1940–2026), creator of a total legacy for Italian design

When Giuseppe Brion died in 1968, the components company he had founded twenty years earlier as B.P.M. had already embarked on what seemed, at the time, a near-fanciful venture, under a new name: Brionvega. That “venture” was to rewrite the design of communication and entertainment, producing future icons such as the radio “Cubo”, the Algol television, and the rr226 radio-phonograph. Ennio Brion, Giuseppe’s son, immediately joined his mother Rina Brion at the helm of the company, consolidating the experiment into a true cultural myth. Now that Ennio Brion has also passed away, at the age of 86, he leaves behind a legacy that spans the full breadth of what can be called design. Long-standing collaborations with leading figures such as Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper, Achille Castiglioni and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, and Mario Bellini have marked the history of Italian product design. Yet beyond the “spoon scale,” he was also directly involved at the “city scale”, as a client and patron in projects such as the redevelopment of Milan’s Portello district, entrusted over time to Gino Valle, Cino Zucchi, Guido Canali, Charles Jencks, and Andreas Kipar.

In architecture as well, Brion’s presence in both the Italian and international context was grounded in his commitment to enhancing and cultivating a unique cultural heritage. As president of the Amici di Brera, he initiated the restoration of Palazzo Citterio in Milan – now part of the Grande Brera –with new exhibition spaces commissioned in 1980 to James Stirling. And in 2022, together with his sister Donatella Brion, he donated the Brion Memorial to the FAI - Fondo Ambiente Italiano: this final work by Carlo Scarpa, originally commissioned by Rina after her husband’s death, had been destined since its completion to stand as another archetype of architecture and landscape poetics.