The Boby Trolley

Part storage unit, part sculpture. Joe Colombo designed the Boby trolley in 1970 as a mobile organiser for designers and architects, and it quickly became one of the defining objects of Italian Space Age design. Swivelling trays fan out from a central column, open compartments are moulded into the body, and the whole thing glides on casters.

It won first prize at SMAU in 1971 and is now in the permanent collections of MoMA in New York and the Triennale in Milan. In a living room it works as a bar cart or side table, by a desk it’s still the perfect studio organiser, and in a bedroom it makes a bedside table with personality.