Andries van Onck was born in Amsterdam 1928. Amongst his teachers are Gerrit Thomas Rietveld from the Dutch De Stijl group; later he studied in Ulm at the Hochschule fr Gestaltung with Tomas Maldonado, Walter Zeischegg and Max Bill. 1959 he started as a designer at Olivetti in Italy assisting Ettore Sottsass; 1965 he opened his own studio in Milan and his wife Hiroko Takeda joined him later. They created many products in different sectors, such as household appliances, furniture, machine tools and electronic equipment. From the very start he is concerned in the theoretical aspects of design, such as design language, morphology and semiotics, and he spent much time as a teacher, wrote articles and also the book Design. Il senso delle forme dei prodotti, Lupetti 1994.