Everything Solid

Architect Nicolò Ornaghi and photographer Louis De Belle teamed up to investigate the aesthetics of a down-falling icon of the Italian design. Recognising a connection with an odd custom of MIT students — where a not functional piano is dropped off the roof to celebrate the “Drop Date” — Everything Solid documents the exhaustion of Boby, a trolley container designed by Joe Colombo in the 1970’s.

Today, Boby is considered an Italian Pop design icon. It is part of the permanent collections of the MoMA in New York and of the Triennale di Milano. Boby represents a period of Italian wealth, economic growth and high productivity.

The authors came into a specific multicolor Boby, heavily damaged and torn apart. By rearranging Boby’s pieces and photographing them in different compositions the project emphasizes a quality of the object that falls completely outside the realm of functionality, namely its color variety and juxtaposition. By moving the product from a given condition (its typical and nite appearance) the trolley itself transcends its function and starts to be accessible through different points of view. Through the possibility of reading the accrochage pieces as pure composition, the images rely on the color qualities and the accidental beauty of random rearrangements. At the same time one can read the object as a broken piece that illustrates the ephemeral nature of mass design – conceived to last for a few years and be replaced shortly thereafter.