Tag: Mario Bellini designer

Ritmo Della Strada

There is a good deal more to the Ritmo than a bunch of robots and a certain confusion over its name.

Style statement. Image credit: cargurus

Was any decade as truly modern as the 1970s? One characterised in retrospect within a roseate glow of giddy colours and lurid sartorial fashions; long hair, beards, beads and ABBA songs; what chroniclers  ignore however, was how genuinely, thrillingly new it all appeared at the time and after an interval of four decades, appears to be even more so now.

In terms of product design, little that occurred in the decade that followed came even close to the impact of the ’70s. Unfortunately this was probably equally true in other areas. Ah Italy. Bastion of culture, of taste; leaders in industrial innovation and design, but fatally prey to political instability. Certainly no product of this land can Continue reading “Ritmo Della Strada”

Interview: Mario Bellini, Designer

Not many designers get to venture outside the boundaries that divide the discipline. Mario Bellini is one of them: furniture, architecture, product design and automotive work are all included in his remarkable portfolio.

Mario Bellini
Mario Bellini

Bellini is the winner of, among others, 8 Compasso d’Oro and prestigious architecture awards including the Medaglia d’Oro conferred by the President of the Italian Republic. Seen from an historical point of view, the activity we call design is a process with as wide a variety of final products as there are material human needs.

From that standpoint, product design, architecture, graphics, car design and clothing, for example, would be seen as variations on the theme of working out what form things take to solve a problem. Continue reading “Interview: Mario Bellini, Designer”