Interview

You could call Luigi Colani one of the most influential and underrated designersof the 20th and 21st centuries. And he would probably agree—most likely with an exclamation point, which is how he punctuates most of his sentences. It’s fitting, given that Colani is a man of extremes. For more than 50 years, he has created breathtakingly beautiful, biomorphically streamlined cars and planes that have broken speed records. He has also been a leader in the detail-centric field of ergonomic design, having received particular attention in 1986 for his design of the Canon T90—the first camera conceived expressly for the shape of the human hand and eye. In no time, the T90 was knocked off by virtually every other camera maker.

Born in Berlin in 1928, Colani grew up obsessed with the interplay of design and motion. As an adult, he became a wildly prolific designer, and his biomorphic vision extends beyond motorcycles, automobiles, and aircraft, all the way to chopsticks, headphones, chairs, and china. (His 1971 Drop teapot for Rosenthal—the shape of a raindrop in free fall—is a stunner.) Pretty much anything Colani could think about putting his hands on was fair game.

But Colani considers himself more a theorist than a designer. Now age 81, living in Germany and China, and perpetually dressed in a signature white sweater and white pants that have been his look for decades, he’s cultivated a philosophy where forms are derived from the sensual (even sexual) shapes of nature—especially his favorites, fish and birds. Colani’s stealth aesthetic might have been viewed as a bit out-there or space-age back in the 1970s, when his ideas seemed better suited to a concept car or a Star Wars set than an assembly line at General Motors. But now, with the world suddenly waking up to notions of fuel economy, -Colani’s stentorian position on streamlining and fuel seems more relevant than ever.

And as architects and designers as diverse as Karim Rashid, Zaha Hadid, and Santiago Calatrava have all ridden the sinuous curves of biomorphism to stardom, Colani’s fantastic visions look less like futurist fantasies and more like premonitions of design to come.

DAVID COLMAN: Obviously, people who are in design know who you are, but I don’t think people outside of the design world necessarily do.

LUIGI COLANI: In 2007, I was named World Champion of Car Design, World Champion of General Design in London, in Pasadena, in Paris—even in China.

COLMAN: But you’ve been incredibly influential and don’t get enough credit.

COLANI: I’m copied all over the world. [laughs] You see, shit is not copied.

COLMAN: Very true, nobody copies shit. What was the first thing you saw where you thought, I want to design that someday!

COLANI: That’s a funny story. I was 3 years old, and we had a very rich neighbor in Berlin who drove a Mercedes sports car. I remember standing behind this car, admiring the trunk, how nicely shaped it was, for an hour. That shape has never left me—I could design it today!

COLMAN: Were you obsessed with cars even then?

COLANI: No. I was more into high-speed trains as a child. We lived near the railroad tracks—200 yards away—and there was an aerodynamic, high-speed train that went from Berlin to Dresden. It was this fascinating yellow and crimson machine, very streamlined. I would stand and watch as it went by.

COLMAN: In the early 1930s, streamlining was an amazing new force. Do you feel lucky that you were a child then to see it?

COLANI: I was very lucky to see all these airplanes and ships and cars. We lived near a very famous airfield outside of Berlin, where the first plane loops were done and prototypes were flown. I could see these fantastic streamlined airplanes from my window, going up and down. I was absolutely crazy for aircraft.