KAZUHIDE TAKAHAMA (Nobeoka-Japan, 1930 - Bologna, 2010 ).

KAZUHIDE TAKAHAMA (Nobeoka-Japan, 1930 - Bologna, 2010 ). Four "Rennie" chairs. Italy, 1970s. Lacquered wood and leather. Measurements: 111 x 60 x 44 cm. Four "Rennie" chairs designed in 1969 by Kazuhide Takahama for Simon Gavina, in honour of the T-Chair model designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. These chairs are an Icon of Italian style, although designed by a Japanese architect. Chairs with high back and wide seat upholstered in brown leather and black lacquered wooden legs. Kazuhide Takahama Japanese architect and designer. Born in 1930, he studied architecture in Tokyo and after graduating joined Kazuo Fujioka's studio. In 1957 he went to Italy to supervise the architectural layout of the pavilion with which Japan participated for the first time in the XI Triennale di Milano, where he met the designer and businessman Dino Gavina (1922-2007) with whom he began a lifelong professional collaboration. In 1968 Gavina sold his company Gavina SPA to Knoll International, with its Foligno plant designed by Achille Castiglioni, and founded together with Maria Simoncini (1927-2010) the manufacturer Simon International (later acquired by Cassina) and a year later the exhibition and shopping centre named after Marcel Duchamp was inaugurated in Bologna with the participation of the famous Dadaist painter and photographer Man Ray.In these new offices, Takahama was able to collaborate with the famous architect and designer Carlo Scarpa and in the following years he developed an intense professional activity that led him to the creation of various types of furniture and lamps, which still constitute so many works of art, always characterised by a great simplicity and formal cleanliness and very often rigorous as zen compositions.his colleagues said that he was so quiet that they called him "the man of stone", but his presence was clearly perceptible.Takahama continued to develop his activity as a designer until his death in 2010.