Dettaglio costruttivo di modello, Michele De Lucchi /
LUOGO: Il Chioso, atelier privato
Model construction detail, Michele De Lucchi /
PLACE: Il Chioso, private atelier
Medoc /
Filo di Lama, Erice 1312 /
DESIGN: Michele De Lucchi + Philippe Nigro
Medoc — Michele De Lucchi + Philippe Nigro
On that morning Michele De Lucchi awoke very soon as usual,
but something different - a thought, a doubt, a memory - disturbed
the routine he had chosen in order to be what he wanted to be:
the train from Angera, the cabinet in the centre of Milan, the
trips, the appointments, the agenda that had become his second
companion (since 1982 when he had put it in an exhibition and as
book in a project, as a joke or seriously); hand drawings, navigation
between architecture and design, and then the evening train, almost
every evening.
Instead, that morning, while he was making his coffee and while
he was staring at the machine - which he had designed for Alessi
that he liked testing to perhaps discover something to improve -
he was waiting for the first steam puffs to come out from it telling
him ok, here we are, he couldn’t think of anything but that steam.
Until he seemed to feel a slight sudden change in the light of the
kitchen. He didn’t take too much notice, he took a cup of coffee,
went back to his bedroom and started packing his small suitcase,
the journey wasn’t long: he packed two or three photos of his
parents he liked to look at every now and then, he moved to the
door, to the road, to the car waiting for him to reach the airport.
The hotel did not seem to him worse or better than the usual ones,
but the good point was that the room was nearly a suite, where
he could relax after the day that had been long due to the journey,
the meetings, lunch and dinner. So he opened the door of the
room/suite: the light in the entrance - a Tolomeo wall, by chance
- was strangely on and the sandy voice of Bob Dylan was coming
from the living room:
“...Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again...”
02
03
Words that did not seem to say much to him now but reminded
him of a winter evening many years ago - at a friend’s house in
Milan, it was in 1980 - during which that song continued to play
from a record player.
There were no record player in the living room at Belfort Hotel,
but only a kind of iPad connected perhaps to Spotify or something,
yet the music was just the same.
Neither the record players nor the iPads switch on by themselves,
he had entered with a normal key, no chips or automatisms:
Michele just couldn’t remember leaving the light switched on.
Therefore, he took a few more steps in the corridor and popped
in the living room.
On the sofa there were two long, thin crossed legs in a pair of khaki
trousers, which were very elegant and just a little baggy - just below
the legs a pair of moccasins for boats, worn without socks: above
a white linen shirt, and higher above, a beautiful head of long grey
hair tied in a ponytail. It couldn’t be, instead it was: it was Ettore,
Ettore Sottsass jr.
Sottsass’s beautiful head turned, smiled at him and spoke in his
friendliest voice and that slight accent that only those who knew
him well and loved him could grasp:
“How are you, Michele?”
In answer to him, Michele sought with his hand a small armchair as
close as possible to the sofa, pulled it towards him as he looked at
him and sat down, not so softly that his eyes blurred for a moment.
It couldn’t be, but it was Ettore himself: who was looking at him
with his blue eyes he had seen so many times change expression -
in many years spent together studying, then at Olivetti and in the
good old days of Memphis - : without ever leaving a kind of the
melancholy he carried, due to things that Michael himself would
later understand after a long time.
Natural Genius
A DESIGN STORY - Michele De Lucchi
