Matteo Thun was born in Bolzano, Italy, in 1952, studied at the Salzburg Academy under Oskar Kokoschka, took his degree in architecture in Florence in 1975 with Adolfo Natalini and moved to Milan in 1978, where he met and started working with Ettore Sottsass. In 1981, he was a co-founder of the Memphis group, the design movement that so shaped events in the eighties. The next year, the Vienna Academy for Applied Arts appointed him to the chair in product design and ceramics. Leaving Memphis, he founded the Studio Matteo Thun in Milan in 1984 and served as Creative Director with Swatch in 1990-93. Matteo Thun stands for long lasting solutions with holistic approach. Architecture means designing the soul of the place. This implies an aesthetic, economic and technological sustainability. It means to create a synthesis of the existing, the purpose and the area. The solution is different, each time. Product design must reflect the soul of the brand. It is architecture of simple, pure and beautiful gestures to serve a daily life that goes well beyond our present life. Matteo Thun has won the ADI Compasso d Oro Award for design excellence three times and only recently has received the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2010. His Side Hotel in Hamburg was chosen as Hotel of the Year in 2001, the Vigilius mountain resort won the Wallpaper Design Award in 2004 and the Radisson SAS Frankfurt was chosen as the best hotel opened in the year in the Worldwide Hospitality Awards in 2005. The Prix Acier Construction was given to him for the Hugo Boss Strategic Business Unit in Switzerland in 2007. Matteo Thun was inducted into the Interior Hall of Fame in New York in December 2004 and is a member of RIBA, the Royal Association of British Architects.
