Born in 1927 in Italy, Gae Aulenti is one of the few women architects to enjoy complete responsibility for the projects in which she becomes involved. Characteristics of her work are her love of nature and her trust in engineering. For Aulenti, architecture is both art and concrete science. Her best known furniture designs are the Tavolo glass table for Fontana Arte and the April folding chair for Zanotta, both stocked by Aram.

Architect Gio Ponti founded Fontana Arte in 1932 as an artistic division of the company Luigi Fontana – historically a market leader in advanced glass manufacturing and design. A private group bought the company in 1979 and employed a strategy of using big names in the Architecture and Design world to re-launch it. Throughout the Nineties, Fontana Arte acquired Candle, Schopenhauer and Naskaloris, and launched Oggetti in 1998.