Joe Colombo

Joe Colombo was a different designer from others, he did not want to follow the design of that time. He did not want to be famous or get any big awards he just wanted to be distinctive. His interest was in flexibility and multi functionality. He thought that problems could be solved by a design, that makes the human itself in a better mood by admire the design and by making use of it.



One of his products that made me think of another designer is the 4867 chair comparing it with the Panton Chair made by Verner Panton. The 4867 was the result of experiments with new technology and the century-old search for a one piece chair in plastic. As when it came to moulding it had some problems forming this shape, they had to take the forms apart and make the legs separately from its body, the hole in the middle was not there on purpose, it was produced when the chair was extracted from the mould. It has the same elements of the Panton chair the difference is that the Panton was one single mould and it came out good with some different material and experiments. Although it is plastic it looks really comfortable I would not change anything form it, even the hole in the middle that it had to be there on purpose it is simply attractive with the product.

4867 chair

Another product that caught my eye is the Tubo Chair, this chair is designed in a strange way if you see it for the first time u would not notice that it is a chair. This was designed by four tubular tubes that can be arranged to suit each user, it can be functional by putting the tubes according to the situation. Each tube can get loosen by a metal clipper and each element can even be stored inside the other. The chair is made up of synthetic materials, including foam, PVC, and synthetic upholstery.

Tubo chair

Yet, another chair that has the same form of elements is the Elda Armchair designed way before these two chairs I mentioned. It was also named after his wife Elda. This was one of his early work on plastic for large surface forms. The form of this chair looks really ergonomic and it is quite similar to the Ball Chair where it can give u piece and a bit of privacy. This chair can also rotated a whole 360 degrees in both ways. The tubular leather compares to the Tubo Chair and the lower part, the plastic has a similar input to the 4867 chair. As in my opinion these chair look quite amazing but I would prefer to sit on the Elda chair instead of the others especially the Tubo chair it does not look quite comfortable.

Elda Armchair

Reference: 

:Mel Byars and Arlette Barré-Despond, (Year 1999) 100 designs/ 100 years 

Bernard Polster, Claudia Neumann, Markus Schuler  and Fredrick Leven, 2004. The AZ of Modern design

Anti-Design

Anti-Design originated in Italy in the 1960's as a reaction against the modern dreary and sophisticated designs. The movement of good design emphasized of striking colours and scale distortion. The colour palette was mostly blacks, whites and greys. Anti-Design got its era by producing furniture, exhibitions, and manifestos. Ettore Sottsass Jr. was the main and first designer of the Anti-Design movement once it took over and grew in a large number.

Circus box

One may not notice what these are, Ettore Sottsass designed these strange looking tall cuboards made out of plywood and covered with plastic. The decorative surface looks in a geometrical style but all different from each other, and with dull colours not as in good design using primary colours and meaningful patterns. Their mainly use was as cloth hanging. In my view I do not like them at all they look much more as a skyscrapers or a models of a stop motion set.

 Selene Chair

As we know chair designs of other eras are all designed beautifully and well build , as they should be. In anti-design, there was a major preoccupation with space and storage. They often tried to make their designs fold or stackable because of this problem we still make most of the chairs in a cheap look and functional for space. Vico Magistretti designed the Selene chair that could be stackable to save space. It is a cheap, light-weight, portable, waterproof, easy to clean and a single piece of polypropylene in a single process. Stackable plastic chairs have become so common that we forgot their original. In my view it is a very great design for stackable, it is also simple shape that can goes with everything, but still it looses the sense of a chair.

 Boalum Lamp

Another example of anti design is this strange looking lamp called the Boalum flexible lamp by Gianfranco Frattini and Livio Castiglioni. This was just a simple long, flexible, plastic tube with bulbs wired inside. It does not have that aesthetic look and great function, but it can be manipulated by the owner the way he adore the lights to glow whether in a garden, a party, meeting room etc. In my view it does not look interesting, it is just a tube but the lights may create a beautiful effect by simply moving the tube around.

Anti-Design is not only on strange and unusual looking objects, it is just a different thinking and a different way of looking at an object. Most of the objects are well known and really amazing. Also new ideas and materials were added by this era.

Referencing: Anti-Design - The Art History Archive (Year August 2011) Anti Design, [Online] Available from: http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/antidesign/ [Accessed: 5th January 2014]