An ancient forge of ideas and projects, which over the years has seen the best architects affect their style and their ideas precisely in marble. Achille Castiglioni, Adolfo Natalini, Michele De Lucchi, Enzo Mari, Martin Bedin, Matteo Thun, Charles Pfister, David Palterrer, Ettore Sottsass, Aldo Rossi, Alessandro Mendini, Sergio Asti, Mario Bellini, Guglielmo Renzi, Danilo Silvestrin, Luca Scacchetti, Marco Piva, Ugo La Pietra, Paolo Ulian, Marcelo Joulia, … and many others. Because when the best of “Made in Italy” design and style meets the skilled artisans, a fascinating journey is born between the endless veins of a stone that tells the story of man. With each of these great names in architecture and design, UpGroup has been able to create unique objects, unrepeatable inlays and transparencies. Lamps, tables, bathrooms, but also furnishings of prestigious hotels and elegant yachts.When craftsmanship and the sensitivity of a craft workshop, where everything is still handmade, meets the creativity of the greatest architects, extraordinary projects are born, which over time have become true classics of the Italian Style.

Achille Castiglioni

Son of the sculptor Giannino and Livia Bolla, he graduated from the Milan Polytechnic in 1944; after graduation he worked for the practice of the older brothers Livio (1911 – 1979) and Pier Giacomo (1913 – 1968) in piazza Castello in Milan, devoting himself to urban planning, architecture, exhibitions, exhibitions and product design. In 1944 he took part, together with his brothers, in the VII Triennale di Milano…

ADOLFO NATALINI

He graduated in 1966 in Florence and, in the same year, he founded the Superstudio with Cristiano Toraldo of France and others. The Superstudio experience ended after about twenty years; the projects matured during that period found great prominence in specialized magazines. At the end of the sixties, with Roberto Barni, Umberto Buscioni and Gianni Ruffi, he was a member of the Pistoia School…

MICHELE DE LUCCHI

His career began after graduating in architecture in Florence: having become an assistant to the Design course held by Adolfo Natalini at the University of Architecture of the Tuscan city, he came into contact with radical design and founded the Cavart group, inspired by those principles. The following years saw him in Milan, where in 1979 he met Ettore Sottsass, who will follow in the Memphis group, and in 1980 he started an independent activity…

ENZO MARI

Born in Cerano da Carolina and Luigi, Mari attended the Brera literature and art Academy from 1952 to 1956, specializing in psychology of visual perception. After finishing his studies, he immediately dedicated himself to the emerging world of industrial design, presenting his first project to the Milanese furniture manufacturer Danese in 1957…

Marcelo-Joulia-upgroup-DESIGNER

MARCELO JOULIA

Argentinian  architect & designer Marcelo Joulia studied in France before setting up his own agency “Marcelo Joulia Naco” in the heart of Paris in 1991 with a global vision.Global by its unique approach integrating Architecture, interior design, product & graphic design, video , scenography; global by its own way of embracing international cultures; global by its capacity to tackle any challenge with a refreshing view from individual homes, huge leisure complex, hotels, trendy restaurants, trade shows, boats, planes, furniture design, offices and shops …

Philippe Starck

He began his career with the production of inflatable furniture in 1968 and will subsequently receive important work assignments. In 1974 he settled in the United States and then returned to Paris two years later. He founded the company Starck Product (1979) to commercialize previous creations. Especially famous is Juicy Salif juicer, designed in 1990 for Alessi and became a “cult object”. He currently lives and works in Paris, where he holds the position of professor at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs.

MARTINE BEDIN

Martine Bedin, architect and designer, was trained in France and then moved to Milan, where in 1981 she participated in the foundation of the design group of avant-garde and breaking Memphis. For Memphis in the eighties he designed iconic objects still in production today. He works with different materials, including marble, wood, metal and ceramics, accompanying and describing his projects with polychrome drawings of remarkable expressive and poetic quality…

PAOLO ULIAN

He was born in 1961. He attended for three years the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, where he attended the painting classes held by Getulio Alviani and Luciano Fabro, then he moved to Florence to enroll in Isia. He graduated in industrial design in 1990 with the design of a cardboard wind screen with which he won the “Design for Europe in Belgium”…

Designers Feix & Merlin

FEIX & MERLIN

Feix & Merlin Architects is a design studio based in London and São Paulo, co-founded in 2006 by Julia Feix and Tarek Merlin. From the beginning, Feix & Merlin have constantly produced a magical and mysterious work…

MATTEO THUN

He graduated in architecture at the University of Florence in 1975 and studied at the Academy of Salzburg with Oskar Kokoschka. In 1980 he moved to Milan, starting a collaboration with the Memphis group and Ettore Sottsass. In 1984 he founded his own studio and began working for Swatch, of which he was artistic director from 1990 to 1993. From 1983 until 2000 he taught design in Vienna at the “Universität für angewandte Kunst”…

CHARLES PFISTER

After receiving a B.A. in Architecture from the University of California, Charles Pfister worked for 15 years in Skidmore’s staff, in the interior design department of Owings & Merrill. It was during this period that he created the Pfister Lounge Collection for Knoll, production begun in 1971. In 1981, he founded his own company with offices in San Francisco and London...

DAVID PALTERER

Born in Haifa, Israel in 1949, he lives in Florence Italy since 1972, where he graduated in 1979; he is also an academic correspondent at the Academy of the Arts and Design in Florence. He has taught at the Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Kunste in Stuttgart, the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence and since 2008 he has taught at the Faculty of Architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan Polo in Mantua and since 2009 at ISIA Firenze…

ETTORE SOTTSASS

“I get angry when they tell me I’m an artist; what i really mean is that, I do not get angry but I’m basically an architect. » (Masters of design, Bruno Mondadori, 2005). Son of the architect Ettore Sottsass Senior and Austrian mother Antonia Peintner, he studied first at the scientific high school Galileo Ferraris and than architecture at the Polytechnic of Turin, he finally graduated in 1939. He than served  in Montenegro where he remained interned for 6 years in a prison camp. Back in Italy, he began his activity in Milan in 1947 where he worked with his father and then opened his first design studio. He collaborates in this first period with Giuseppe Pagano…

ALDO ROSSI

He began his professional activity at the Ignazio Gardella studio in 1956, then moved to the studio of Marco Zanuso. In 1963 he also began teaching: first he was an assistant to Ludovico Quaroni (1963) at the town planning school of Arezzo, later by Carlo Aymonino at the Istituto di Architettura di Venezia…

ALESSANDRO MENDINI

Alessandro Mendini since the end of the seventies is one of the innovators of Italian design both as intellectual and author, and as an authoritative member of the Alchimia group. From those years his interest led him to work for numerous companies such as Alessi, Venini, Cartier; Swatch, Swarovski etc. His furniture is also very well known, including the “Museum Market”…

SERGIO ASTI

After graduating in architecture at the Milan Polytechnic, he trained in the profession in Milan in the fifties, and was an assistant professor in interior design (1953-1958). In the field of Industrial Design, he was among the first to address this problem in the 1950s. He is one of the founders of ADI of which he is currently Honorary Member….

MARIO BELLINI

He graduated in architecture in 1959 at the Milan Polytechnic. In the sixties he started working in the field of design, opening a professional studio. From 1961 to 1963 he was design director at Rinascente, the famous and prestigious department store chain. In 1987 he founded the Mario Bellini Associati Srl, now Mario Bellini Architect…

GUGLIELMO RENZI

Guglielmo Renzi lives and works in Florence. A graduate of the Faculty of Architecture in Florence, he has for many years carried out a multidisciplinary activity that includes design, art and architecture. He has worked in Italy and abroad for the creation of interior design projects for hotels, shops and showrooms and has participated in numerous art and design exhibitions. He has taught as an assistant for Prof. Arch. Adolfo Natalini…

DANILO SILVESTRIN

Born in Bolzano and raised in Italy, Danilo Silvestrin has lived in Germany since the 1960s. After studying architecture in Milan and Florence, Silvestrin went to Düsseldorf in 1966 and studied sculpture at the Folkwangschule in Essen in 1966/67. In Dusseldorf, he came into contact with some of the most innovative artists of the time and worked closely with Günther Uecker and Heinz Mack of the ZERO group, and designed the visual Creamcheese...

LUCA SACCHETTI

In 1975 he graduated in architecture at the Milan Polytechnic and, the following year, began teaching architecture in the same faculty in Milan. In 1978 he worked as a freelancer teacher, establishing his studio which, in a few years, became an architectural and artistic phalanstery where young architects and designers from Italy and abroad worked…

MARCO PIVA

He graduated in architecture from the Polytechnic of Milan in 1976 and later founded the “Studiodada Associati” with a group of university students. In 1990 he started his own design studio, whose activity ranges from architecture to interior design to masterplanning, creating numerous projects all over the world…

UGO LA PIETRA

Ugo La Pietra has developed since 1962 an activity aimed at the clarification and definition of the relationship “individual-environment”. At the beginning of this work process he developed knowledge tools (models of understanding) aimed at transforming the traditional “work-spectator” relationship. He has worked inside and outside the disciplines declaring himself always “researcher in the visual arts”; anomalous and uncomfortable artist and therefore difficult to classify…