DC 154, a perfect synthesis between functionality and inspiration by Carlo de Carli
By Athina
L’Icona di Design di questa settimana ci riporta indietro agli anni ’60, anni ricchi di fermento e di trasformazioni sociali.
Many companies were preparing to abandon traditional craft processes to arrive at industrial production techniques. Among these, the Sormani furniture company began to make its way, led by a very young but already resolute Luigi Sormani. Focusing on the experimentation of new materials and above all on the collaboration with the best designers of the time (Gio Ponti and Joe Colombo to name a few), Sormani gave life to pieces of great value.
The DC 154 chest of drawers, designed by Carlo de Carli in 1963, stands out among the most successful and interesting elaborations of those years.
Carlo de Carli was an extremely fascinating and multifaceted figure: his activity as an architect and designer was based on solid theoretical principles. Designing a house or a chair was basically the same thing for him, the important thing was to put the needs (material and spiritual) of the user at the center of his projects and create structures consistent with the surrounding space.
“The house is not an object placed on the ground, but of everything around it is the continuation”.
This great attention to the context and the environment as a whole was undoubtedly shared and supported by Sormani, a supporter of the concept of “total living”.
The DC 154 is a refined piece of furniture with a clean and classic line; At the same time it has an eccentric and contemporary side that is revealed in the small details.
È realizzato in legno verniciato e laccato ed è disponibile in tre versioni diverse: bianco, nero o rosso. Il piano è costituito da una superficie specchiante, un accorgimento singolare che crea, attraverso il riflesso, quella continuità con l’ambiente tanto ricercata da De Carli.
Un altro dettaglio che rende questa cassettiera unica e riconoscibile tra mille è la particolare forma dei piedini in ottone.
Perfetta sintesi tra funzionalità ed estro, il DC 154 è una delle più interessanti realizzazioni di De Carli (insieme al tavolino “Ragno” di cui abbiamo scritto qui), frutto tanto del suo ingegno e della grandissima passione che nutriva per il suo mestiere.
“There are no decalogues in architecture, no ways of design. There is only, before each one of us, one’s own life and the life of others, which must be welcomed with love. Living it with love, an architect will also create an ideal chair and an ideal home; But if he does not feel in himself the correspondence of every other external form, in continuity, unlimitedly, it is useless for his brain to strive to dress his personal functional forms in beautiful clothes… The “assimilators” try to draw the secret of an essence in the analytical attributes of Architecture, but it is hidden in the mysterious gift of life lived by an artist, the moral value of the human personality is the breath of creation.”
