Part 2 of the interview with the curator of the exhibition Joe Colombo – Inventing the Future at the Vitra Design Museum, Mateo Kries, on January 20, 2006. One of the most successful designers of his time, Joe Colombo produced design classics such as the “Elda” armchair, the “Universale” chair or the lamp “Alogena”. In 1971, Joe Colombo died at 41 years of age. The exhibition “Joe Colombo – Inventing the Future” is the first international retrospective dedicated to Colombo’s work. .
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00:00 because I think in the profession of design he was able to combine his interest in technology
00:07 with his artistic ideas or with his ideas which were sometimes even utopian and very far ahead of his time.
00:16 There was a whole discussion about nuclearism, about nuclear energy in the 50s,
00:22 not only in Italy but in all the artistic world, we have to say,
00:27 because there was this big shock after the atomic bomb in Hiroshima
00:31 when the intellectuals were shown that the human race has been able to control a power which is uncontrollable,
00:43 so they were confronting this possibility of destructing the whole world.
00:49 And a lot of people said, after Hiroshima nothing will be the same
00:52 because we have to face these incredible powers and the power that men have gained over nature.
01:01 So not only these young painters from Italy were dealing with this,
01:07 but also people like Robert Rauschenberg or Yves Klein were reflecting on these nuclear issues.
01:14 Gio Colombo, as a painter, he wanted to make visible the basic energies of nature,
01:23 so this is where this nuclear discussion comes in.
01:27 He wanted to make research into the very inner structure of natural energies
01:34 and he wanted to make those visible in his paintings.
01:36 And then he took similar reflections on these nuclear discussions and he adapted this to architecture.
01:44 And he said, well, if we are able to control nuclear power, we might as well reconceive completely our cities.
01:54 We will be able to put the whole infrastructure under the earth and the surface of the earth.
02:03 We can use it for nice dwellings, to have a nice, like a new natural park,
02:10 like a garden Eden on the surface of the world.
02:14 And all traffic, all the industrial production would be under the earth.
02:18 So this was his nuclear city, which was on one hand only thinkable
02:23 because endless power supply would be there, thanks to nuclear energy.
02:30 But of course it also has something apocalyptic,
02:33 because all the traffic, all the important systems are under the earth.
02:39 So it has the aspect of hiding people under the earth.
02:44 It was a very interesting but very utopian concept, of course.
02:48 Colombo was absolutely fascinated with the new technologies, especially the media, the audiovisual media.
02:54 And he said that media would completely change people's lifestyles.
02:58 And it would allow people to work at home, to work during traveling.
03:05 I'm sure he would have had a laptop if it would have been invented.
03:09 He even told one other designer one day that people might carry their telephones in their pockets one day.
03:16 So he must have had this capability of thinking in the future
03:22 and thinking about things that in that time were not really thinkable because they did not exist.