This week’s Design Icon takes us back to the 60s, years full of ferment and social transformations.

Many companies were preparing to abandon traditional craft processes to arrive at industrial production techniques. Among these, the Sormani furniture company began to make its way, led by a very young but already resolute Luigi Sormani. Focusing on the experimentation of new materials and above all on the collaboration with the best designers of the time (Gio Ponti and Joe Colombo to name a few), Sormani gave life to pieces of great value.

The DC 154 chest of drawers, designed by Carlo de Carli in 1963, stands out among the most successful and interesting elaborations of those years.

Carlo de Carli was an extremely fascinating and multifaceted figure: his activity as an architect and designer was based on solid theoretical principles. Designing a house or a chair was basically the same thing for him, the important thing was to put the needs (material and spiritual) of the user at the center of his projects and create structures consistent with the surrounding space.

“The house is not an object placed on the ground, but of everything around it is the continuation”.

This great attention to the context and the environment as a whole was undoubtedly shared and supported by Sormani, a supporter of the concept of “total living”.

The DC 154 is a refined piece of furniture with a clean and classic line; At the same time it has an eccentric and contemporary side that is revealed in the small details.

It is made of varnished and lacquered wood and is available in three different versions: white, black or red. The top consists of a mirroring surface, a singular device that creates, through the reflection, that continuity with the environment so sought after by De Carli.
Another detail that makes this chest of drawers unique and recognizable among a thousand is the particular shape of the brass feet.
Perfect synthesis between functionality and inspiration, the DC 154 is one of De Carli’s most interesting creations (together with the “Ragno” coffee table we wrote about here), the result of both his ingenuity and the great passion he had for his job.

“There are no decalogues in architecture, no ways of design. There is only, before each one of us, one’s own life and the life of others, which must be welcomed with love. Living it with love, an architect will also create an ideal chair and an ideal home; But if he does not feel in himself the correspondence of every other external form, in continuity, unlimitedly, it is useless for his brain to strive to dress his personal functional forms in beautiful clothes… The “assimilators” try to draw the secret of an essence in the analytical attributes of Architecture, but it is hidden in the mysterious gift of life lived by an artist, the moral value of the human personality is the breath of creation.”