Born in Austria, a French citizen, Marc Sadler has lived and worked for many years in Europe, North America and Asia. He currently lives in Milan where he is a consultant for companies in the fields of home furnishings, large and small household appliances, lighting, technically andvanced products and sports.
In all of these areas, experimentation with plastics has often formed a key part of his acivity. In the late sixties, when design was known only as esthetique industrielle, he already showed a strong curiosity for the subject, choosing it for his thesis at ENSAD, Paris, where he graduated in 1968.
At the beginning of the seventies, he perfected the first ski-boot in thermo plastic material, subsequently commercialised by the Italian firm Caber (later known as Lotto). This marked the start of a long and fruitful collaboration which led to the patenting of the ski-boot with a symmetric shell, which was for many years the most widely-sold ski-boot in the world.
It was this project which was at the origin of his early specialisation as a sports designer, and which led to close collaboration with the most important multinational sport companies in the United States, Asia, and Europe. Working in this sector, which has often pioneered research into new materials and techniques, provided the experience which would later enable him to bring innovation to more traditional areas.
His work has won many international design awards over the years: his Motorcyclist’s Back Protector (designed for Dainese) is now housed in the permanent collection of design at the MOMA in New York and the lamp Mite (Foscarini) is part of the design collection of the Beaubourg in Paris.
Despite his reputation as a technical designer, Marc Sadler has a strong feeling for painting, finding it so emotionally absorbing as to consider it his real passion.