1958, the year of Saturn.

Enrolled in my first year of architecture, I remember my first "encounter" with Gastone Rinaldi.

Domus, Casabella, still almost all in black and white, the charm of the greats, of the masters.

Giancarlo De Carlo invited Vico Magistretti to the faculty: one of those extraordinary, shoulder-to-shoulder seminars that could be done with fewer than a hundred students.

The Carimate chair, Vico Magistretti in white socks, and us devouring Domus, Casabella, Architettura.

And there was Gastone. He had already won a Compasso d'Oro: a legend.

Young, athletic, and talented. One of those figures on whom many of us built the hopes of our work, one of those figures to follow and pursue, unattainable, with the monkey-like curiosity that has always been the finest quality of our profession.

Then, many years later, a very social meeting, very much about saying and not saying, friends around, a bit of confusion, the unsaid, probably, more important than what was said. And discovering that the master, as often happens, is a person of enormous serenity, strength, sweetness, and simplicity.

Saturn, by now, is fading into the past, but it remains a pillar, a turning point, a work so clear and precise, so marked by the absence of time and dating, that it still accompanies us along the path, now set, of being designers.

Perhaps it is also Gastone's fault (or merit?) if I continue to do this job today.

Many years later, almost by chance, both of us held back by a reluctance to ask and a hesitation to offer, we found ourselves collaborating.

We even did some four-handed work on the same sheet of paper, and Gastone's serenity, like a long wave, overwhelmed my then somewhat frantic nature.

Today, Gastone Rinaldi is, rightfully, being presented to the public in an exhibition that the PMT and the Salone del Mobile Triveneto are proud to have conceived. An exhibition displayed with clarity and lucidity by Enzo Berti, which has left Rinaldi's works with plenty of room to breathe.

A small and precious, intimate and enlightening exhibition that succinctly tells us the story of a lazy student, a professional footballer, and a racing driver with a passion for design, research, and experimentation.

Of a pencil craftsman who managed to enter, with the elegance that is his merit, without pushing, with the charisma born of seriousness and professionalism, into the difficult and articulate world of design, marking, in an era of pioneers, his path of unforgettable milestones, placing himself, perhaps in spite of himself, gruffly, in the role of master for many of us, designers of the second generation of "younger brothers".

Saturn, since 1958, remains like an archetype, a timeless shape, the "always seen and never seen" that is characteristic of the Chinese vase or the Etruscan bowl.

Saturn, for those who do not remember, is a sofa.