Donato D'Urbino was born in Milan, 1935. He studied at Milan Polytechnic until 1966. There he met Gionatan De Pas and Paolo Lomazzi, with whom he opened a studio in Milan in 1966 in Milan.
"Blow", an inflatable chair of PVC film the trio De Pas/D'Urbino/Lomazzi designed, made them famous over night in 1967.
In 1970 this trio again made a splash with "Joe", a chair they designed for Poltronova. Shaped like an outsize baseball glove, "Joe" is also intended as a tribute to the American baseball player Joe DiMaggio.
Both chairs are important exemplars of radical design in Italy, representing a clean break with traditional notions of seating and lifestyle.
In 1973 the trio De Pas/D'Urbino/Lomazzi designed "Sciangai" - an upright bunch of wooden chopsticks 1.50 meters high.