Gea Wooden Side Tables by Kazuhide Takahama for Gavina, 1960s, Set of 2

Kazuhide Takahama (Nobeoka, 1930 – Bologna, February 10, 2010 [1]) was a Japanese architect and designer.

Born in 1930, he studied architecture in Tokyo and after graduation joined the studio of Kazuo Fujioka.

In 1957 he came 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 entrepreneur Dino Gavina (1922-2007) with whom he undertook a professional collaboration that it would last a lifetime. Consequently in 1964 he moved to Bologna and went to work as a furniture and lamp designer in the San Lazzaro factory.

In 1968 Gavina sold his company Gavina SPA to Knoll International, with the related factory in Foligno designed by Achille Castiglioni, and together with Maria Simoncini (1927-2010) founded the Simon international manufacturer (later acquired by Cassina) and the year later the exhibition and commercial center named after Marcel Duchamp opened in Bologna with the participation of the famous Dadaist painter and photographer Man Ray.

In these new locations, Takahama was able to collaborate with the famous architect and designer Carlo Scarpa and in the following years he carried out an intense professional activity which led to the creation of furniture and lamps of various types, which still constitute as many works of art, characterized always with great simplicity and formal cleanliness and very often rigorous like Zen compositions.

His colleagues said that he was so silent as to be called “the man of stone” but his presence was clearly perceptible.

Takahama continued to carry out his activity as a designer until his death in 2010.

Gavina Spa was founded by Dino Gavina in 1960, who assumed the role of managing director and called the architect Carlo Scarpa to the presidency. The historic headquarters of the company are located in San Lazzaro di Savena, in a building designed by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni in 1959. In 1963, thanks to state incentives for the development of southern Italy, Dino Gavina opened an office in Foligno. In 1962 Dino Gavina met Marcel Breuer in New York and convinced him to re-edit and realize his projects from the 1920s. Among the designers who worked for the company: Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Achille Castiglioni, Carlo Scarpa, Ignazio Gardella, Tobia Shoe. After the sale of the American company Knoll in 1968 and the closure of the Bolognese brand, several products of the Gavina collection were sold under the Knoll brand; some of them were later sold to other manufacturers (such as the Sanluca armchair). Knoll still uses the Foligno site to produce its collection for European clients.