Riccardo Dalisi

A visual monograph on Riccardo Dalisi (1931–2022), the architect and designer whose work was rooted in Naples, and who won the Compasso d'Oro for his long research into the Neapolitan coffee pot.

The book does not follow his career in order. Instead it moves through archival photographs, sketches, design objects and poems, covering his part in Italian radical design, his participatory architecture and the projects he made together with communities. Bianca Felicori writes the essay, and the editors are Gennaro Leone, Oscar Piccolo and Lorenzo Mason Studio. It came out alongside the Dalisi exhibition at Spazio Leone in London in autumn 2025.

Dalisi taught architectural design at the University of Naples Federico II until 2007. In 1973 he co-founded Global Tools with Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini and Andrea Branzi. From 1979 he worked with the tinsmiths and coppersmiths of Rua Catalana on a new Neapolitan coffee maker for Alessi, and that research won the Compasso d'Oro in 1981. A second award followed in 2014 for his social commitment, which included workshops with children in the Rione Traiano district.

Spazio Leone, 2025. 225 pages, foil-embossed gatefold softcover, 24 x 30 cm. Printed in Venice.