(originally published 10.2009)

A designer's work consists of bringing the future to the present.
Joe Colombo

First as an artist and then as a designer Joe Colombo evinces and interprets through his work the profound technological and social changes that have taken place in post-war Europe. The shapes, objects and spaces created by the Italian designer mirror his belief in the progress of art, technology and humanity. It was on the basis of this belief that Colombo cultivated the concept of habitat, a dynamic area that rejected the static conventions and typologies of the past – like house, rooms and furniture, as well as family, work and leisure – to suit them to the needs of modern men and women. The sleeping, living and eating areas of this habitat are no longer the rooms of a house, nor should they be stuffed with furniture. As with life, each area should be what a person makes of it, each zone an expectant wrapper that is activated by modular, multi-functional equipment.

The Minikitchen set out to be one such piece of equipment. Designed for the Italian kitchen manufacturer Paolo Boffi, it was launched at the 1963 Milan Triennale. It was less than half a cubic metre of wood and metal that contained a cooker, a fridge, a tin –opener, drawers for cutlery, work surfaces and even a place for cookery books – everything powered by a single electric plug. This entire item and dynamic was greater than the sum of its parts, mechanisms and functions: the Minikitchen was not kitchen furniture. It was the kitchen.

Equally, it was the desire to activate an area by means of a piece of equipment that led Miguel Rios Design to create the (SUM)One item. Taking the formal and conceptual appropriation of the piece /BNU, /2009 by Ângela Ferreira as the starting point for a joint presentation initially devised for the building occupied by MUDE – Museu do Design e da Moda, (SUM)One is, like the Minikitchen, an outline of the future.

But the form of /BNU, /2009, has its origins in the past – in the actual MUDE building, to be precise, the former headquarters of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino. Established in 1864 as an issuing bank for the Portuguese colonies, the BNU was one of the main arms of Portugal's imperial power – and this building was the epicentre of that power. The part of the museum where the two works are on display, the Dom Luís Pereira Coutinho room, is so named in honour of the director of the bank who had the Rua Augusta building refurbished. This matchless “no-budget” work, designed by Cristino da Silva and opened in 1964, the centenary year of the institution; in that same year Pereira Coutinho also inaugurated another symbolic headquarters of the so-called “bank of the colonies” in Lourenço Marques. Designed by José Gomes Bastos, this outstanding example of modern Portuguese architecture is the same building today, but all the rest has changed. The city where it stands is no longer Lourenço Marques. The Portuguese colony is now an independent African republic. And this imposing block of concrete and glass is no longer the seat of financial power of the metropolis. It is the National Bank of Mozambique.

Ângela Ferreira was in the two seats of financial power – and in the tension between the space of the first and the shape of the second – fertile ground for a reflection on power and Portugal’s colonial past. This is an object built through the memory and life of its author, and one which seeks with its very presence before us to activate our collective memory.

By appropriating /BNU, /2009 and subjecting this object to the rationale typical of the design process, Miguel Rios Design has constructed a new work inspired by Colombo’s MiniKitchen, basing it on the shape of the BNU headquarters in Lourenço Marques, evoked by Ângela Ferreira. By incorporating mechanical devices (wheels, drawers, hinges) and suggesting new functions (workbench, table for meals) the (SUM)One intends to question the nature of an artistic object and ascribe to it a use that is missing by nature.

As with any object or item conceived via the design process, this use only exists when there is the possibility of true interaction between object and subject. That is to say, when a person creates, and urges, the use of an artifact.

And it is precisely on the limits of that (im)possibility that (SUM)One operates: although it is in an area of a gallery and is displayed in an artistic setting, this object is not devoid of the functions that give it meaning. While the exhibition is on it can be opened, closed, fiddled with, touched, used. But while the chance of being brought into action is not denied it, here it is nothing more than the sum of its working parts. Its functionality is exhibited here with a certain potential, like a future scenario.

Because this gallery is not actually a house, nor even a habitat: no matter how much Joe Colombo wished to change the way we activate the areas we live in, there are still spaces which, by reason of their function, themselves activate meanings, metaphors, stories from the fixtures and fittings placed before us – and not the other way round. Here and now we know how to be the capim grass that grows in the bed of African soil. But when the exhibition is over and all this is taken out of the gallery, the capim will become ordinary grass, the African soil will be ordinary ground and (SUMOne) can finally be a piece of kitchen furniture.

(SUMOne) will only really be put into practice once it is mass-produced, distributed and marketed – essential aspects of the design process. Only then will the item we see before us, like Colombo’s Minikitchen, find its true function: to meet the everyday needs of its users and activate whatever places it is taken to. Only then, released from the meanings, metaphors and stories of the past, will we be able to bring a new future to our present.

Frederico Duarte
Having studied communication design in Lisbon, Frederico Duarte (1979) worked as a designer in Kuala Lumpur and Treviso. Since 2004, he quits design practice to focus on what is around this activity, having worked in research, promotion, production, curator and critical design. Currently living and studying in New York, where he is part of the inaugural class of the Masters in “Design Criticism” the School of Visual Arts.