A View to the Future

Joe Colombo sitting in his Elda Chair

Joe (Cesare) Colombo 1930-1971 was fascinated with the future and how people would live in the up coming modern world.  Having grown up in the !950's and 1960's myself, I noticed the fascination for things of the future.  I remember reading about what the world should look like 50 years or so into the future. Many people played around with the idea of the future, but Joe Colombo actually took the future design seriously.

Roll arm chair and foot stool 1962

Joe Colombo first trained as an artist.  He was a painter and a sculptor,  joining the Movimento Nucleare, but quickly switched to design after creating the ceiling for the Milan Jazz Club in 1953.  Before going into design while still an artist, he started playing around with sketches of Futuristic "nuclear city".  Once into designing he made it his business to do something about bringing that futuristic ideal into being.  He made great steps in developing completely unique pieces of furniture to fit into his idea of future modular compact living. He experimented with all the new materials of the 20th century.  In 1963 he designed and produced the largest fiber glass molded chair ( the elda).  He developed the first stackable plastic chairs (the universale chair1965).  He loved bold, folding, curvaceous forms and disdained straight and sharp lines.

Colombo's Boby Trolley

He saw himself as "creator of the environment of the future". He predicted that our life styles would change allowing us to study at home and carry on our activities there.  It is fascinating  how intuitive his imagination was. The internet has allowed this to happen.  He designed everything from outdoor lights that doubled as seats to serving trays fitted for airplane travel. He designed  "habitat of the future" in which  an entire house was contained in a series of mobile elements. .His design career was cut off short with his untimely death on his 41st birthday.