Luigi Colani
Maverick designer whose curvaceous, visions in many forms were loved all over the world
LUIGI Colani, who has died aged 91, was a renowned designer who embraced radical thinking and influenced European product design. Many designers saw him as a genius with remarkable future-vision. Others, notably those enmeshed in the world of fixed, corporate design rules, labelled him as a man with too many fanciful thoughts.
Colani was the man behind the emergence of a new “design language” movement. This reshaping of design was framed across a career encompassing more than 5,000 designs. More than 100 German household products carried his signature by 1978.
He was the pioneer designer of the world’s first streamlined trucks and heavy goods vehicles in 1971 but, as Colani declared: “Nobody took any notice.” Colani’s all-plastic, highly streamlined fuel-efficient airliner design of 1976 accurately pre-dated current designs from Airbus and Boeing by three decades.
The leading British industrial designer Ross Lovegrove cites Colani as of significant influence and of Colani’s works as having prescient environmental relevance. Zaha Hadid was a Colani design disciple, her architecture being influenced by Colani’s philosophy of curves, structure and scale.
Colani’s famous “curved” range of household and bathroom furniture manufactured by Villeroy and Boch defined his emergence in the field in the 1970s and earned him a fortune.
One of Colani’s greatest successes came when he shaped the Canon T90 camera in the 1980s. His designer’s eye knew no limitations and he designed a curvaceous grand piano for the piano manufacturer Schimmel. Colani also designed headphones for Sony in the 1990s.
Proof of Colani’s diverse design talent saw him create clothes: Swissair used Colani-designed crew uniforms, and in 2004 he redesigned the uniform of the German police force.
Colani liked curves, not straight lines, preferring “biodynamic” designs — he thought designers should look to nature for design solutions: birds, sea creatures and the female form all inspired him to create his radical, organic designs.
Usually swathed in allwhite clothes, the swarthy, mustachioed, cigar-smoking Colani was of dramatic looks, long dark hair and great presence.
Having achieved recognition and financial independence, he refused to be part of the corporate world. If company men did not approve of his revolutionary ideas, he neither cared nor compromised: the next project was always waiting.
Luigi Colani, one of four children, was born as Lutz Colani in Berlin on August 2, 1928, to a Swiss father who was a film set designer. His mother, a theatre worker, was of Polish descent.
The multilingual young Colani dropped out of art school in Berlin and moved to France in 1949, working as a coal miner, jobbing illustrator and advertising artist.
He then studied design at the L’Ecole Polytechnic in Paris, and the Sorbonne. He worked for Renault and Simca, helping construct Simca’s first glass-fibre car.
Becoming fascinated by aerodynamics he went to California, where he worked for McDonnell Douglas, then returned to Europe in order to build a base in Berlin.
He started to design and build his own one-off prototype car bodies and won a Golden Rose design award for an interpretation of a Fiat for the future.
His big break came in Paris in 1960 when he designed a radical new women’s shoe for Jourdan. It won a national prize and exerted a considerable influence on French shoe design for a decade.
Luigi Colani produced his own Colani GT car design as a self-build kit car of radical shape.
Like many car designers, he realised that the Italian dominance of car design meant that his non-Italian name might hold him back. He changed his name from Lutz to Luigi and it proved to be a good decision. Cars, designs and prototypes for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Volkswagen and BMW all came along.
Buoyed up with commissions and income (Thyssen paid him more than £1m (€1.16m) a year as design consultant), Colani bought and restored the moated 14 th century Schloss Harkotten at Sassenberg in North Rhine Westphalia. It became his base and design studio — and had no telephone.
In the 1980s, fascinated by Japanese culture, he relocated to Tokyo and set up his Japanese design centre.
In 2007 a Colani exhibition was held at the Design Museum London. In 2011 he had a major exhibition in Munich.
The Colani Chinese design centre resulted from a government invitation to create a design base in Shanghai.
Few designers knew that it was Colani who sculpted the figures of athletes displayed at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Luigi Colani, who died on September 16, is survived by his partner Ya Zhen Zhao, his son Solon, who is also a designer, in Berlin, and another child from an earlier relationship.