Cubo ashtray, Danese
Bruno Munari

21 November 2013

If it were not for its square geometry, the Cubo, designed by Bruno Munari in 1957, could be called a true Columbus’s egg. The basic function to be performed is that of containing ash and cigarette butts, but things grow more complicated if the aim is also to prevent an assault on the user’s eye and nose. And so Munari, a past master of simplification, came up with an essential cube of melamine and embedded in it a sheet of aluminum simply bent back on itself. This is sufficient to hide the remains of the cigarettes from view and block their smell: the form remains visually clean and the olfactory aspect of the object is also solved. For behind the simplicity of a result often lies a great complexity of design. To empty it, all you have to do is take the metal part out of the plastic one, reinsert it, and there you are! How’s that for the intelligence of small things. Manufacturer: Danese.

Posacenere Cubo di Bruno Munari per Danese.

Domitilla Dardi

Torn between the history of art and the history of architecture, she came across design at the end of the last century and has not let go of it since. She loves to deal with everything that entails the use of ingredients, their choice, mixing and transformation: from writing to cooking, from knitting to design, from perfumes to colors. She is curator for design at the MAXXI and professor of the History of Design at the IED.

All the posts