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Who knows if in the 60s, the Milanese designer Joe Colombo (1930-1971) imagined that one of his most visionary projects would go down in history as an icon of the contemporary world, more current than ever 60 years later, and relaunched on the market thanks to the upgrading of materials and technical features that have adapted it to our times, leaving the concept totally unchanged.
We are talking about the Minikitchen designed by Colombo in 1963 for Boffi: totally self-sufficient, on wheels and electronically powered, this mobile kitchen includes a hob, mini-refrigerator, storage drawer, storage doors, cutlery drawers, sockets for small appliances, cutting board and small pull-out top for a total of half a cubic meter of space!
Still on display in the permanent collection of the MoMA in NY, the Minikitchen paved the way for Joe Colombo to create housing boxes, the so-called "total furnishing units" made on a larger scale, mobile and flexible modular systems which, exhibited in the New York museum in 1973 on the occasion of the legendary exhibition "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape", established themselves among the most acclaimed made in Italy projects by the international public.
It may seem surprising how nowadays, the furnishings dedicated to comfort, the sofas in the forefront, abandon the status of a simple furnishing element, transforming themselves into real multifunctional and hybrid spaces, on which many activities in the living area revolve: avant-garde seats often incorporate tables and support surfaces, small bookcases, accessories for drinks, magazines and remote controls, up to integrated audio systems, which can be synchronized with our own devices, USB sockets for recharging smartphones and tablets, LED reading lights and much more.
But already in the 60s and 70s, the sofas with integrated radio or stereo system, speakers, speakers and lights, bottle compartments and bars were already being cleared in homes more in line with so-called modernity. Not only did the sofa itself acquire fundamental importance thanks to the evolution of space and domestic habits but, in the 70s in particular, with television making its triumphant entry into most homes, attention increased towards technology on several fronts: and technology in the interior always competed with the concept of comfort and relaxation.
Between the 1950s and 1970s, on the wave of the economic boom, industrial materials and new technological products proliferated, culminating in the 70s high-tech furnishings; the highly innovative elements aim to obtain a much more functional, modern, practical and comfortable home. Observing the images of the houses of these decades, it is not surprising to see, in typically minimal and homogeneous spaces, equipped walls that include in a single panel light, mirror and support shelves, suspended dressing tables that also act as a desk top, modular bookcases that contain beds retractable to optimize space, an ideal solution for hybrid spaces such as the study which, if necessary, in a few gestures, turns into a comfortable guest room!
One shouldn't forget that, from the 1950s onwards, Italian design had to "compete" with the arrival on the market of furniture originating from Scandinavian design, a movement which, out of the symbiotic union of practicality, functionality, beauty of shapes and care details has made its motto par excellence, conquering the world international furniture with this concept and always remaining on the crest of the wave.
Some pieces signed by famous northern European designers shine for the ingenious mechanisms that make them multifunctional and always surprising; among these, for example, the industrious Danish designer Kai Kristiansen (1929) stands out, still working at the age of 94 and author, among the most sought-after collectibles, of a series of desks that incorporated a bookcase, a revolving drawer and a secret wet bar. 70 years have passed, but the reaction of pleasant surprise when the unexpected compartments are revealed, has remained unchanged!
