Design, for Joe, meant first and foremost “imagining what is possible”. Or anticipating the future. A child of pop art and plastic culture, influenced in a non-superficial way by the futuristic suggestions of 1960s science fiction, Joe Colombo – who liked to describe himself as a “creator of the future” – embodies the most promethean and cutting edge aspect of Italian design: a technician and artist at one and the same time, he was at the forefront of the innovations in technology and machinery, taking up and embracing their challenge with his own unmistakable and distinctive vision.
The table lamp Acrilica, designed for Oluce together with his brother Gianni in 1962 exactly 60 years ago, is one of the most emblematic examples of Joe Colombo’s design and experimental creativity: by recessing and concealing a fluorescent light at the base of the lamp, as if by magic, Acrilica transports and transfers the light to the top of the luminaire itself thanks to the thick curved methacrylate. For lighting design it was a small revolution: a technical marvel that became an aesthetic emotion. In those years Gianni, Joe’s brother, was studying how light was refracted on perspex.
Ignazia Favata, who was Colombo’s first collaborator and then a passionate scholar and keeper of his archive, recalls: “Gianni used to take methacrylate cubes and cut them diagonally to experiment with the effect of light that coloured, becoming a rainbow. Joe, on the other hand, did not want colour, he wanted to achieve light without colour”. Joe also experimented, all the time. He would take sheets of methacrylate, of different thickness, and fold them as he went along, studying the curvatures and bending the sheet until he could catch the light. When the light escaped, he would change the curvature. “The shape – Favata concludes – was nothing more than the result of studying and experimenting with the transmission of the light beam. From the base to the extreme end of the lamp”.
Ignazia Favata, who was Colombo’s first collaborator and then a passionate scholar and keeper of his archive, recalls: “Gianni used to take methacrylate cubes and cut them diagonally to experiment with the effect of light that coloured, becoming a rainbow. Joe, on the other hand, did not want colour, he wanted to achieve light without colour”. Joe also experimented, all the time. He would take sheets of methacrylate, of different thickness, and fold them as he went along, studying the curvatures and bending the sheet until he could catch the light. When the light escaped, he would change the curvature. “The shape – Favata concludes – was nothing more than the result of studying and experimenting with the transmission of the light beam. From the base to the extreme end of the lamp”.
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Joe and Gianni Colombo’s creation, Oluce – founded in 1945 by Giuseppe Ostuni and today the oldest Italian lighting design company still operating – offers a new special version of Acrilica with a Portoro marble base. It goes without saying that the old fluorescent light has been replaced by LED technology.