| Since 1962 he dedicated himself exclusively to design. |
Who is he Joe Colombo
Paracolpi Alfa doorhandle (1965-1972 prod. Olivari)
| from
the book "L'architettura presa per mano" (Hand on architecture) by Stefano Casciani,
Idea Books, Milan, 1992 "Joe Colombo was a friend of mine when I was a jazz musician; in the early sixties, once I had finished my work in a little, good but dull, orchestra at midnight, I went to Aretusa; in a little alley that lead to the Piazza Diaz, Baj, D'Angelo and Colombo had decorated a small existentialist-type club; we musicians, who loved jazz, came here to do jam sessions after work, until two, three o'clock in the morning". This recollection by Rodolfo Bonetto perhaps gives a different idea - but not all that much - of Joe Colombo: a frantic designer, a tireless inventor, a visionary of a future, immediate and close at hand; who could not resist the temptation to pass the night with jazz music; however, made by persons, and not by machines. Joe Colombo was unique in his geniality because he always succeeded, in his projects, in connecting it with a very simple concept of humanity. |
 Futuristic habitat
for the exhibition "Visiona 1", Cologne (1969 prod. Bayer) |
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| Thus,
his glass for smokers is a kind of prosthesis for the disabled, those somewhat
special disabled called smokers. Only a careful observer of human behaviour, someone
knowledgeable on everyday ergonomics, (not the complicated type that produces
objects/caricatures), could conceive objects such as the aforementioned glass
or the Paracolpi manufactured by Olivari: also the latter a prosthesis for those
who need that enormous prosthesis that is architecture. Certainly, Joe Colombo's vision is ingenuously optimistic: it is a theory based on the belief that many problems can be solved by the use of new materials, first and foremost plastic. His prototype for the Total Furnishing Unit for the MoMA, New York, is almost exclusively made of moulded resin. But this optimism nevertheless focuses on the human figure, as Colombo declares in the presentation of the project, realized posthumously in 1972: "The home must always be suited to the human being, rather than vice versa. The concept of a mass produced unit is therefore justified ... but it must be defined to a point where all its functions will be as perfect as possible". The futuristic dynamism of the avant-garde is transformed in Joe Colombo's work in concrete environments and objects, that make the future become today. |