Telling Joe Colombo means telling the short and intense story of one of the greatest Italian designers, who died in 1971, at only 41 years old. The lightning-fast life of a man who strongly believed in the future and who, just in those fundamental '60s when the future suddenly began to seem close, gave us a very particular foreshadowing. Joe Colombo then designed entire cockpits. First of all, per la Bayer, il Visiona ’69, cellula integrata definita da differenti ”stazioni funzionali”: il blocco ”Night-Cell” (letto+armadiature+bagno), il ”Kitchen-Box” (cucina+pranzo), il ”Central-Living” (soggiorno). Functional stations articulated both in plan and in section, as on the other hand happened daily in the houses designed by Joe Colombo, where the floors and ceilings went up and down in a continuous acceleration and slowing of the internal dynamism, where the bookcases were suspended high and the lights recessed to the floor.
Telling Joe Colombo then means telling someone for whom research always crossed, on the one hand in artistic research (just think of the extraordinary Acrylic lamp and its relationships with kinetic and programmed experiences), on the other in scientific research (It is certainly the one on the application of new materials and new technologies: we have already said about halogen light, so let’s think about injection molding - the very famous chair for Kartell in 1968).
And many things could still be said by telling Joe Colombo, but above all the poignant observation prevails that the short years "of fantasy in power" were also the brief magical years of Joe Colombo. Fate prevented us from knowing what this visionary genius would do in the dark period that followed. Still today, however, twenty-five years later, many of its products, then futures, live alongside us every day, continuing to tell us about a better future.
