Early edition 'Tube Chair' designed by by Joe Colombo for Flexform, 1960s

Created from minimal materials in 1969 by Italian industrial designer and architect Cesare “Joe” Colombo (1930–71), the Tube chair is a sculptural representation of comfort and efficiency. Fitting to its name, the sprawling seat is made from four PVC plastic tubes of different diameters cushioned with polyurethane foam and fastened together with metal clasps. All of the components can be neatly tucked inside of each other, like a Russian doll, making it easy to move and stow away. 

Lauded for such unconventional seating as the Elda chair and the Joe Glove armchair, Colombo started out as a painter and studied architecture at the Polytechnic University in Milan before putting his avant-garde spin on product design.

Today, Colombo is revered as a master of modern Italian design thanks to his provocative modular furniture that embodies the future-forward spirit of the Space Age. Colombo believed that furniture should be “interchangeable and programmable,” and the Tube chair’s arrangement of cylinders is as playful as it is integral to adaptability and convenience, properties its maker intended for this pioneering work.

Like his Additional Living System seating in 1967, the individual tubes are designed to be assembled into different configurations in order to best accommodate the sitter. The piece, which was initially accompanied by a cotton drawstring bag for portability, was originally produced by the Italian furniture company Flexform and since 2016 has been available through Cappellini.

He died tragically young, and his career as a designer lasted little more than 10 years. But through the 1960s, Joe Colombo proved himself one of the field’s most provocative and original thinkers, and he produced a remarkably large array of innovative chairs, table lamps and other lighting and furniture as well as product designs. Even today, the creations of Joe Colombo have the power to surprise.

Cesare “Joe” Colombo was born in Milan, the son of an electrical-components manufacturer. He was a creative child — he loved to build huge structures from Meccano pieces — and in college he studied painting and sculpture before switching to architecture.

In the early 1950s, Colombo made and exhibited paintings and sculptures as part of an art movement that responded to the new Nuclear Age, and futuristic thinking would inform his entire career. He took up design not long after his father fell ill in 1958, and he and his brother, Gianni, were called upon to run the family company.

Colombo expanded the business to include the making of plastics — a primary material in almost all his later designs. One of his first, made in collaboration with his brother, was the Acrilica table lamp (1962), composed of a wave-shaped piece of clear acrylic resin that diffused light cast by a bulb concealed in the lamp’s metal base. A year later, Colombo produced his best-known furniture design, the Elda armchair (1963): a modernist wingback chair with a womb-like plastic frame upholstered in thick leather pads. 

Portability and adaptability were keynotes of many Colombo designs, made for a more mobile society in which people would take their living environments with them. One of his most striking pieces is the Tube chair (1969). It comprises four foam-padded plastic cylinders that fit inside one another. The components, which are held together by metal clips, can be configured in a variety of seating shapes (his Additional Living System seating is similarly versatile).

Vintage Tube chairs generally sell for about $9,000 in good condition; Elda chairs for about $7,000. A small Colombo design such as the plastic Boby trolley — an office organizer on wheels, designed in 1970 — is priced in the range of $700.

As Colombo intended, his designs are best suited to a modern decor. If your tastes run to sleek, glossy Space Age looks, the work of Joe Colombo offers you a myriad of choices.

Find vintage Joe Colombo lamps, seating and other furniture for sale on 1stDibs.