In honor of the Small Cool 2010 Contest, let's look at the work
of the Milanese designer Cesare "Joe" Colombo (1930-1971), whose
designs took efficiency to new, futuristic levels, while
conveying a space-age sexiness that still appeals today.
Beginning in the 1960s, Colombo experimented with new materials
like plastics to create the "environment of the future." This
was the era of the Space Race, and movies like Barbarella and
2001: A Space Odyssey presented spacecraft as the archetypal
futuristic living environment. Colombo didn't just see the
romanticism of these self-contained pods, he felt that they
accurately expressed shifts in human lifestyle: "Traditional
families are tending to give way to small groups created on the
basis of affinity. We will have, in short, the natural tribal
society … These groups living and working in common will require
a new type of habitat: spaces that can be transformed, spaces
conducive to meditation and experimentation, to intimacy and to
interpersonal exchanges." In Colomb