Giorgio Topan, the designer who named a desk like a website

Giorgio Topan has a habit of reading where the office is going. The Padova-born architect, IUAV Venice class of 1982, trained at the Zanussi/Electrolux design centre, once drew for Archiutti a collection called www.60 — office furniture named like a web address, in the years when desks were first meeting the internet. It says a lot about how he works: not chasing trends, but furnishing the change slightly ahead of schedule, through more than twenty years of practice with Gianantonio Perin and, since 2015, at the head of Topan & Partners.

The instinct still runs: his recent work includes Lloyd, the executive collection for IVM Office. For American headquarters that want Italian authorship with a long memory of how offices evolve, La Mercanti keeps his signatures within reach. The dot-com era passed; the desks kept working.