Everything, from the keys to the corners, feels as though it’s been smoothed down and rounded over. The Lettera 22, made two years later, is encased in steel, and, though boxier, is more portable. Encased in enameled aluminum, a light, malleable metal, the machine has a glorious curve, like an inverted Nike Swoosh. All of a sudden, they had a monocoque look, a real smooth line.” Nizzoli’s first typewriter, created in 1948, was called the Lexikon. Nizzoli basically changed the shape of typewriters by taking a technological innovation from the auto industry-press-forming steel-and applying it to typewriters. “Before the Olivetti, typewriters had an old-fashioned look,” said Antonelli, “You could see the keys. Simple, as Horowitz said, but purposely so. (Left: the Lexikon right: the Lettera 22)ĭesigned by Marcello Nizzoli, the Lettera 22 (and its later incarnation, the 32), was a lightweight and luxurious machine. And actually-the Swiss Army knife is another masterpiece!” “He has all his metaphors right, but he doesn’t understand design,” Paola Antonelli, the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, told me this week. But is it me, or does Horowitz sound genuinely unimpressed with the Olivetti Lettera 32? Because he really shouldn’t be.
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