About Us
Cini&Nils has always been an expression of the excellent Italian design and the Made in Italy production.Established in 1969, Cini&Nils has made quality into one of its strong points. It is a creative boutique where ideas are skilfully transformed into products that house the latest LED technology and whose lines are clean, rigourous and rich of detail.
The company’s artistic output pays due attention to the importance of environmental sustainability and interaction with the user by using the latest generation of IoT technologies. Precision, care for detail and elegance are the constants that have always been passed on from one design to the next, contributing to creating collections whose byword is innovation in style and technology.
Designer
Working as a team, Franco Bettonica and Mario Melocchi created innovations that wrote chapters in the history of lighting: Cuboluce, Gradi, Tenso and TensoClic. The firm’s art director Luca Bettonica has since designed such products as Convivio, Assolo and Acqua and created the Cult collection, a venture into creative experimentation with art and light that introduced the sculptress Christiane Beer and the maestro Alessandro Ciffo as its first artist-designers. In 2018, Cini&Nils embarked on a new synergic partnership with the architect Alessandro Scandurra SSA.
Franco Bettonica
Franco Bettonica (Milan, 1927 – 1999) was an architect with a successful practice in construction, interiors and industrial design. He started working with Cini&Nils in 1969 as designer and creative director.
Luta Bettonica
Luta Bettonica si diploma in Disegno Industriale all’Istituto Europeo di Design nel 1991 e inizia l’attività di libera professionista nel campo del design. Franco Bettonica e Mario Melocchi saranno i suoi primi interlocutori progettuali. Nel 1996 insieme all’architetto Giancarlo Leone apre a Milano lo Studio Bettonica Leone e si occupa di design e di architettura.
Alessandro Scandurra
Alessandro Scandurra founded Scandurra Studio Architettura – SSA in Milan in 2001. Working in Italy and abroad, he has designed corporate offices for Philips Italy and Zurich Insurance Italy, Italy’s first Smart District in Milan, commercial venues, hotels and restoration work in historical buildings, such as the Palladio Museum in Vicenza, where he is also curator. He has served as scientific director of the Portaluppi Foundation and is a member of the City of Milan landscape committee. A recipient of nominations and mentions in such awards as the Medaglia d’Oro, the Mies Van Der Rohe Award and the Compasso d’Oro, he has taken part in the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Milan Triennale. He has lectured at Milan Polytechnic and is now visiting professor at the SUPSI, in Switzerland.
Mario Melocchi
Mario Melocchi (Parma, 1931 – Milan, 2013) was one of the first in Europe – in 1958 – to devote his attention to packaging design, from which his interested in due course evolved towards product design, where it settled once and for all after he met Franco Bettonica.
Giancarlo Leone
Giancarlo Leone is an architect, a native of Catania who graduated from Milan Polytechnic, after which he started working in both Catania and Milan with the family architecture office “studio Architetti Leone”, drawing up the General Master Plans for several municipalities in the area around Mount Etna, in Sicily. In Milan, he focused on projects of refurbishment, restoration and installation. He met Luta Bettonica in 1996 on the occasion of the projects for the Roberto Baggio Culture Centre in Thiene and the restaurant Fandango in Milan, launching a working partnership that still today combines creative design with a special care for details.
Christiane Beer
Christiane Beer (Plauen, Germany, 1965) is an artist and sculptress who studied sculpture with Giuseppe Spagnulo at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts, taking her diploma in 1993. Since holding her first solo exhibition in the Sophien Edition Gallery in Berlin in 1994, she has partnered with several other galleries in Italy and Germany. In 2000 and 2002, several of her sculptures were shown in the Haus der Kunst in Munich; in 2008, she showed in the Grafton Building, the Bocconi University’s new headquarters in Milan, while 2009 saw her install her piece ORT in Piazza San Carlo in the Miraggi context, on the occasion of the MiArt fair: the piece is now part of the Panza di Biumo Collection in Varese.
History
Renowned for products that have made history in its 50 years of market presence, Cini&Nils has become a familiar benchmark in the field of high-end decorative and technical lighting.1968
Forbici e apribuste
1969
Collezione da bar
1972
Olio+aceto, sale+pepe
1972
Cuboluce
1973
Cubobar
1975
Posacenere nautico
1990
Gradi
1994
Tenso
2009
Componi
2013
FormaLa
2015
Acqua
2018
Passepartout25 Sopratavolo
Cini&Nils was established in 1969 when two designers felt the need to make their designs directly available to the market. When Mario Melocchi teamed up with the architect and designer Franco Bettonica to found the company, the duo started out by marketing a range of products, many of which have since been bought by the New York MoMA, including the Bar, Tabletop and Desktop collections, the swivel Magazine Stand, the Cubobar and the Game Table. It was in 1972 that Franco Bettonica came up with the idea for Cuboluce, the link in the chain between objects and lighting devices and the progenitor of a new generation of products that marked Cini&Nils’ début in the field of lighting.
These were soon followed by Gradi, whose lighting body comprises a minute enamelled glass cylinder; Tenso 2500W, the first 230V cable system, miniTenso, the smallest 230V cable system that bridges a gap of only 15 cm and so many other innovations.
Light
Light conditions the quality of our lives and technological opportunities enable us to approach it in new ways.The latest generation of products from Cini&Nils is interconnected with the most widely available intelligent devices. Variable light scenarios and wireless interaction are part of the new everyday life on offer from Cini&Nils. Our choice of components aims at human wellness, while our Research&Development laboratory analyses, selects and proposes only the best technologies.
Constant laboratory tests are used to check the absence of flicker, so as to avoid optical disturbances and stress. The Cini&Nils product range ensures a natural respect for colour perception and the right degree of illumination in each environment. The functional, perceptive and connective aspects of light are integral parts of all Cini&Nils designs and our entire range.
Made in Italy
Ever since the firm was founded, its mission has been to focus on excellence in both its design activities and its production – all strictly Made in Italy.The firm’s close relationship with the finest Italian craftsmen has contributed to creating the excellent quality that distinguishes its products’ exclusiveness. Shared experiences, collaboration and the quest for the best solutions to achieve a constant stream of new targets feed the production knowhow acquired in fifty years of experience.
This means that every collection is the offspring of expert hands and the use of state-of-the-art machinery that together lead to the creation of a complete work of skill, comprising details and individual elements that express the finest culture of Italian manufacturing. At the end of every production process, every luminaire has to pass stringent quality control tests, so as to guarantee excellence and high performance.