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Colorado
Colorado - 1983
designed by Marco Zanini
Exhibition Milan - Hong Kong design, new forms and functions in parallel with Italian iconic works
for Memphis
(Trento, Italy, 1954)
Marco Zanini graduated in Architecture from the University of Florence in 1976 and completed his studies in the United States. In 1977 he began collaborating with Ettore Sottsass in Milan. Zanini was one of the co-founders of Memphis in 1981, and designed works for all the collections. He designs ceramics, jewelry, furniture, and blown-glass objects. Founder together with Sottsass of Sottsass Associati, he is the Design Manager for many projects: office furniture for well-known brands, residential interiors, showroom interiors, exhibition design, street furniture and industrial products for a wide range of clients in Italy and abroad. He works as architect and designer in Japan, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Chile, and Spain. His works are to be found in numerous museums and private collections. Zanini holds frequent conferences on industrial design. Today he lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.
BIBLIOGRAPHY/SITOGRAPHY
Ceramic teapot.
W 30 x D 30 x H 30 cm
One of the key ideas of Memphis was the emphasis on design as a vehicle for direct communication, rather than just the functional aspects of an object. It focuses on the communicative, expressive possibilities of design: through colour, texture, juxtaposition of materials, shapes, and so on. It also seeks to break free from the dogma and seriousness of what ‘good design’ should be.
Colorado is certainly a communicative object with its bright, pastel colours accented with punchy yellow and red. Its form is not that of a conventional teapot, but a series of geometric forms stacked together along a slanted axis that forms the spout of the teapot. With its pastel colours and unique geometric forms, Colorado appears to be a cartoonish interpretation of a teapot, an animated character about to leap into life.
