Architect, town planner and designer Zanuso (1916-2001) maintains a great fame as creator of industrial products. Zanuso has in effect a great passion for industrial methods and processes, a greta interest for objects, their functions, their way of being touched and used.

Among the most eminent post-war Italian designers, from 1946 to 1947 Zanuso directed the magazine Domus with Ernesto Rogers and then directed Casabella. In 1948 Pirelli gave him the task of studying the potential use of lattice foam in padding; then he created Antropus (1949) for Arflex. To this other lattice foam padded furniture will follow, such as the Lady armchair and the Triennale sofa, on show for the first time in the IX Triennale in Milan. In 1956 he received a Compasso d'Oro for the sawing machine model 1100/2 designed for Borletti. In its rigorous and sculptural shape his work’s philosophy finds its synthesis.

His personal contribution to modern architecture are the Olivetti establishments in San Paolo, Brazil and Buenos Aires and the Necchi factory in Pavia, which reveal his interest for "architecture as a product" and prefab structures. As well as being a protagonist of Italian rationalism he was also a great representative of Milanese culture. In 1956 he founded with others the Associazione di Disegno Industriale (ADI). He was then Municipal councillor in Milan and member of the town planning commission in the city.