Riccardo Gualino commissioned Giuseppe Pagano and Gino Levi Montalcini to design the Palazzo degli Uffici Gualino in 1928. The building has housed a number of different offices, including those for Fiat and later, the city of Turin. Pagano was primarily responsible for the building’s architecture, and Montalcini for the furnishings. The project received immediate critical acclaim as one of Italy’s first fully realized examples of Rationalist architecture, with Domus devoting an entire issue to the commission in the summer of 1930. The present pair of armchairs is one example of sixty-seven different furniture models that Montalcini designed for the interior. His unified furnishings plan made use of modernist materials such as chromium-plated metal, glass, leather and Buxus— a new cellulose-based product manufactured by the Giacomo Bosso factory where the furniture was also made. The geometric severity and balanced proportions of his designs are a tribute to the ideas of Italian Rationalist architecture expressed in furniture.