Giustini / Stagetti

Domenico (Ico) Parisi was born in Palermo on September 23, 1916, to Sicilian parents who mostly lived in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. In 1925, the Parisi family moved to Como, where Ico earned his diploma as a building technician in 1936. After his studies, Parisi apprenticed at the firm of Terragni. This opportunity allowed him to meet key figures in Italian architecture, art, and culture of the time, including Cattaneo, Lingeri, Radice, Rho, Bontempelli, Bardi, Persico, Ciliberti, and Sartoris. He later founded a diverse design collective called Studio Tecnico Artistico Alta Quota with fellow architects Fulvio Cappelletti, Giovanni Galfetti, and Silvio Longhi.

When Italy entered World War II, Parisi enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Ninth Pontieri Battalion, operating on the Russian front. Profoundly affected by the war, he documented his experiences through drawings and photography - an expressive medium he remained deeply attached to throughout his life. He was discharged from the military in 1943 and returned to Como, where he resumed his design work, focusing on custom furniture pieces, exhibition installations, and architectural interiors in collaboration with Luisa Aiani, the young widow of Giovanni Galfetti.

In 1947, he married Luisa, and in 1948, they opened their first furniture studio, named La Ruota (“The Wheel”), which became a hub for design, art, exhibitions, and cultural events. In 1952, encouraged by his friend Sartoris, he completed his architecture degree at the Institute Athenaeum in Lausanne.

From the early 1950s onward, Parisi’s work as a furniture designer and architect became increasingly intense and prolific. From his earliest projects, he adopted a methodological approach inspired by figures such as Carlo Belli and Alberto Sartoris, integrating the pictorial arts into design by involving painters and sculptors in the creative process, thus paving the way for a new architectural language.

The late 1960s marked a turning point in Parisi’s design research. He began to explore a new utopian and existential idea of living, without fully abandoning the design of buildings and furniture. These explorations, carried out with a group of artists, culminated in the project Ipotesi per una casa esistenziale (“Hypothesis for an Existential House”) in 1972–1973, which was first presented in Paris in 1974. In 1986, the first retrospective of his work was held at the Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Milan.

In 1990, Luisa - his life partner and an inexhaustible source of creative energy - passed away suddenly. Deeply shaken, Parisi nonetheless continued his work and exhibitions.

Ico Parisi died in Como on 19 December 1996.