Designer Ettore Sottsass
From the book that accompanied the 1972 Museum of Modern Art exhibition,
Italy: The New Domestic Landscape
Designer Joe Colombo with collaborator Ignazia Favata
From the book that accompanied the 1972 Museum of Modern Art exhibition,
Italy: The New Domestic Landscape
Designers Studio Zanuso, Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper
From the book that accompanied the 1972 Museum of Modern Art exhibition,
Italy: The New Domestic Landscape
Balderi family home
From the book Underground Interiors: Decorating for Alternate Lifestyles
by Norma Skurka and Oberto Gili, 1972
Home of artist Lino Schenal
From the book Underground Interiors: Decorating for Alternate Lifestyles
by Norma Skurka and Oberto Gili, 1972
Cave of the Year 2000 by architect Jacques Couëlle
From the article “Keeping Cave”, Réalités magazine, October 1969
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In the late 1960s, well after modernism’s entrance into how we lived, the next wave was how we were going to live. In one corner, all hard edges and compartments, things slotting neatly into place, based on grids, proffering a slick minimalist chic. In the other corner, fluid organic shapes and a Flintstones house aesthetic. Both styles have their attractions.
First stop, a utilitarian tomorrow, from the 1972 exhibit, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape. Looking at a Joe Columbo’s Total Furnishing Unit, the tidy futurist package for living it provides is impressive and attractive. His guiding principle in designing the Total Furnishing Unit was “The space within this unit should be dynamic; that is it should be in a continual state of transformation, so that a cubic space smaller than the conventional norm can nevertheless be exploited to the maximum.”*
The Marco Zanuso/Richard Sapper design was to be a complete and fully equipped habitation, where similar elements can be “assembled and coordinated to provide living quarters for communities of varying sizes.”* The concept by Ettore Sottass offers a clinical and impersonal philosophy, where “the idea is to succeed in making furniture from which we feel so detached, so disinterested and so uninvolved that it is of absolutely no importance to us.”*
Moving over to a softer, plusher horizon, I found some, ahem, intriguing models for living environments in the 1972 Underground Interiors book. We’ll just move quickly past the ones with carpeting on the walls and ceilings. I particularly enjoyed the Milan home of the Balderi family that had a repeating “tube” concept—utilizing open space, bright colors and providing lots of things to climb on—the home as playground. Another entry that caught my eye was the Roman abode of artist Lino Schenal, that sported areas molded to fit his requirements. The result is perfect for the space age playboy.
And speaking of the Flintstones, I give you “a cave of the year 2000” by architect Jacques Couëlle built into a wooded hillside near Paris. Inspired by the way animals construct and customize homes by burrowing into the ground, he created a grotto carved out of earth and rock. Couëlle declared “Architecture is inhabited sculpture.” While he was not on my radar before coming across a 1969 Réalitiės magazine article on his cave, I am now quite a fan and wonder how many of his burrows still exist.
[ *Quotes sourced from Italy: The New Domestic Landscape ]
>> Futurescapes flickr set
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Sandi Vincent grew up in the bay area of California surrounded by mid-century modern architecture and other influences responsible for her affinity for the period and its pop style, including her early exposure to The Monkees, The Avengers and Gerald McBoing-Boing. Sandi now resides in Portland and is a board member of a local nonprofit preservation group, the Mid-Century Modern League. In her day job at a community foundation, she sports the web/social media/print materials coordinator title.
Follow Sandi on Twitter > @SandiV
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