Poetry in everyday objects: The designs of Mario Bellini

By Thomas Hine
Inquirer Architecture Critic
The Philadelphia Inquirer
23 August 1987

The renowned Mario Bellini, designer of some of the most iconic furniture and industrial objects of the twentieth century, remains one of the most influential figures in modern design.

At the turn of the century, the tendril dominated visual culture. Objects followed curved, vine-like lines inspired by organic growth. During the 1920s, however, zigzags and ziggurats took over. Jazz, Cubism, and the rise of skyscrapers encouraged designs that appeared spiky, restless, and nervous. From the 1930s through the 1950s, designers turned to steamships and streamlined forms. By the mid-1950s, jet fighters and tail fins reshaped the visual landscape once again.

A summary of the design

Later in the 1960s, tail fins gave way to the shark’s mouth. During the 1970s, this aggressive form briefly disappeared, replaced by the plain black box. Soon after, the shark returned in a more restrained form. In the late 1970s, the wedge shape emerged as a minimalist expression of the same idea. More recently, waveforms and a form of neo-streamlining have reasserted themselves.

Of course, this summary has serious limitations. It overlooks enormous technological shifts in materials and manufacturing. It also ignores changes in wealth distribution, retail systems, and expectations about what objects should do for people.

In addition, it leaves out science, economics, and social context entirely. What remains, essentially, is metaphor.

Even so, this outline may be enough to carry you through a cocktail party or an afternoon in a museum survey course. Despite everything it omits, it is not wrong. In fact, it may capture what matters most. The essential quality of human-made objects lies not in the technology that produces them, but in how people understand and relate to them.

No machinery can work if people do not want to use it

Nearly everything we touch is wrapped in imagery. Much of that imagery has little to do with function, yet it strongly shapes how people feel about objects. This applies to dishes, mirrors, and silverware, but it becomes critical for tools and machines. No machinery can function if people resist using it.

The most satisfying tools are often the simplest. These objects clearly express the human hand on one end and the task—grass to cut or wood to carve—on the other. However, such tools remain relatively crude. More complex machines can perform the same work far more efficiently, provided users are comfortable and confident in their operation.

Every day life requires constant interaction with objects that most people barely understand. In that sense, survival itself depends on faith. One of design’s central goals, therefore, is to make people believe in things.

For this reason, industrial and consumer design is saturated with imagery. Designers draw on the human body, nature, and other machines. At any given moment, the same motifs appear across vastly different objects, from teacups to office towers. These forms gain popularity because they feel fresh and exciting. Sometimes a new casing disguises the fact that nothing has changed beneath the surface. At other times, a distinctive shape genuinely conveys something meaningful—although few people care to analyse it deeply.

Consider Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who placed non-functional girders on the exteriors of some buildings. He intended to show passers-by how the structure stood up. Standing upright is something everyone instinctively understands.

The poetry of everyday objects

For decades, the poetry of everyday objects went largely unnoticed. In recent years, however, typewriters and coffeepots have received the kind of formal attention once reserved for Brancusi sculpture. Museums have begun to explore our collective attic, where coffee spoons, toasters, and thermos jugs quietly tell the story of modern life.

Bellini’s work helps explain this growing fascination with how form can transcend function. One reason Milan-based design attracts so much attention is that Bellini’s career coincided with the transition from mechanical to microelectronic technology.

The problem of design

“Having no specific shape and free from the constraints of mechanical independence,” argues Cara McCarty, curator at the Museum of Modern Art, “micro components could be combined in countless ways.” As she notes, industrial designers now face the same challenge as architects: almost anything can be built.

This freedom can be unsettling. Design thrives on constraints. Designers frequently speak of “the problem” and “the solution,” language that falsely suggests there is only one of each. In reality, there are endless ways to define a problem and even more ways to respond to it.

While such openness occasionally produces genius, it more often breeds uncertainty. The proliferation of books and museum exhibitions on architecture and design reflects a frantic search for guidance. When rules disappear, designers usually turn to heroes.

The wedge form

Born in 1935, Bellini has influenced design for more than three decades. Much of this influence came through his long association with Olivetti, the office-equipment manufacturer. His calculators and typewriters helped redefine the appearance of electronic machines and made the wedge form ubiquitous during the 1970s.

The wedge makes ergonomic sense for keyboard machines because it tilts the keys toward the user. Its appeal, however, was primarily visual. It made electronic devices appear new and purposeful. Previously, such machines had resembled complex mechanical contraptions. With the wedge, tape decks, televisions, and other electronics adopted clean, geometric casings that signalled a new technological era.

Clay to Styrofoam

This evolution in form also reflected a change in Bellini’s working methods. Early in his career, he modelled designs in clay, which encouraged rounded shapes. In the early 1970s, he shifted to polystyrene foam, a material best suited to straight cuts. Significantly, this change affected only his modelling process, not the materials used in production. The forms evolved because the thinking developed. Ultimately, ideas matter more than materials.

Table-top calculating machine

One of Bellini’s earliest projects, from 1965, was a large table-top calculating machine. He focused intensely on the design of the number keys. His challenge was to reconcile the round indentation suggested by the fingertip with the square base demanded by manufacturing.

To solve this, he stretched a thin plastic membrane between the round and rectangular forms, then cast the resulting shape in hard plastic. The outcome was a sculptural key that, like old tools, connected the human hand to the task. At the same time, it echoed the tent-like forms architects were exploring during that period.

Bellini later applied the stretched-membrane idea at a much larger scale in a 1966 video display terminal for Olivetti. The cantilevered structure, complete with its distorted fisheye screen, appears deeply impractical. The operator would face away from any paperwork, and the device offers no clear workspace. Instead, it evokes a speculative, paperless future rather than a functional office environment.

The transition from a stretched membrane to skin is only a small conceptual step. This idea appears in a 1972 hand calculator whose keys sit beneath a yellow rubberised surface. As an object, it feels slightly unsettling. Using it might feel like tickling something alive.

The metaphor of skin is clearest in Bellini’s furniture. Architects often refer to a building’s skin as its outer cladding. For the human body, however, skin does far more. It defines form and holds everything together.

Bellini’s furniture

This principle shapes Bellini’s furniture, particularly the overstuffed Bambole chairs of the early 1970s and the later leather-covered CAB chairs. Both conceal steel frames. Yet if you saw only the frames, the final form would be impossible to predict. The Bambole frame resembles an overturned table, while the CAB frame outlines a chair stripped of its seat and back.

In both cases, the skin zips over the structure. The Bambole encloses layers of foam with varying densities, while the CAB relies almost entirely on skin and bone. The result is one of the most elegant chairs of contemporary design.

Ultimately, Bellini reminds us that people respond instinctively to the metaphor of the human body. In an era where almost anything is possible, choice becomes overwhelming and meaning elusive. Skin and bones provide a starting point.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes