Joe Colombo: From the Boby Trolley to Modular Living

Joe Colombo: From the Boby Trolley to Modular Living

Joe Colombo, born in 1930 and dead in 1971 on his forty-first birthday, worked as a designer for only about ten years. He still left a dense body of work turned towards the future: a mobile, modular home, designed for small, flexible, reconfigurable spaces. More than single objects, he designed ways of living.

From brush to plastic

Cesare Colombo, Joe to those close to him, began as a painter. Trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, he joined the Movimento Nucleare in the early 1950s alongside Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo, working in abstract expressionism and then concrete art. He went on to study architecture at the Politecnico of Milan. That double training, in art and architecture, shows throughout his work.

The turning point came in the late 1950s, when he took over the family electrical-appliance business. Through contact with industrial production he discovered the materials and processes he would go on to use: thermoplastics, injection moulding, ABS. In 1962 he opened his own design and architecture studio in Milan and from then on concentrated on objects.

Mobile living

What sets Colombo apart is less the single object than the overall vision. He thought of the home as a system of mobile, combinable elements, where furniture ceases to be fixed and becomes equipment. His research into compact living units, shown in several exhibitions of the late 1960s, sketched a future in which kitchen, rest and work fit into reconfigurable modules. The same idea of modularity runs through his domestic objects.

Boby, Universale, Spider

The Boby trolley, designed in 1969, is the clearest example. This ABS castor-mounted cart, with its swivelling drawers and compartments, condenses the idea of mobile, reconfigurable storage. Originally conceived for graphic designers and architects, it later found its way into all kinds of interiors. Its production was handled by Bieffeplast.

For Kartell, Colombo signed the Universale chair (model 4860), developed between 1965 and 1967. It is one of the first adult chairs entirely moulded in a plastic material, conceived to be stackable and demountable. It shows his interest in large-scale industrial production, sparing in material and in assembly. Kartell, one of the first companies to bet on plastic for the home, was a natural partner.

On the lighting side, his story merges with that of Oluce. As early as 1962, he developed with his brother Gianni the Acrilica lamp, whose curved methacrylate diffuser carries the light to its edge. He also signed the Spider lamp, with an adjustable reflector mounted on a metal stem, inaugurating a series of articulated lights. Oluce supported his most technical ideas.

On the vintage market

His output was cut short by his early death, and period examples of his best-known pieces are sought after, all the more so as many were made for shorter spans than the classics produced continuously. As always, price depends mostly on condition, faithfulness to the original model and traceability; we give no figures.

What we check

With Colombo, everything starts from the materials. For a Universale chair, we check the Kartell marking, the condition of the moulded plastic, which is prone to scratches, warping and colour change, and the soundness of the joints. For Oluce lights, we inspect the diffuser, the adjustable reflector, the marking and the wiring. Each piece is photographed in natural light, and its listing states the model, the estimated production period and the condition. Pieces for sale are on the Joe Colombo page.