Luigi Colani - Alula Spuria

Luigi Colani credits the elegance of birds flight as the inspiration for countless human technological innovations, including the automobile.

"This is the alula of a bird's wing, in ancient times it's feathers were know for enabling perfect flight. Any man-made copies are nothing more than miserable imitations."

Left: Luigi Colani`s freehand illustration of a tractor.

Luigi Colani (born August 2, 1928 in Berlin, born Lutz Colani; † September 16, 2019 in Karlsruhe) was a German, internationally active designer. He shifted his center of life and activity several times between Europe and Asia, where he had his greatest successes.

Colani was known for his aerodynamic, biomorphic shapes for cars, airplanes and many other everyday objects. [2] He referred to his organic design language as biodesign and defined this as a “humanization of the human-machine interface” through ergonomics and knowledge of the latest materials. [3] The universal claim of his 3D philosophy [4] led to a corresponding optimization of almost all designable objects. Some colleagues and journalists judged Colani's designs "as far ahead of their time". [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Colani was a very respected designer, especially in Japan and China, and had his greatest successes there. In 1973 he set up a design center in Japan. From 1982 he was chief designer for several Japanese manufacturers of technical consumer goods such as Canon, Sony and Mazda for five years and at times had more than 300 employees. From 1995 his activities relocated to China, where he took over professorships for design at several universities. In 2014 he opened a design institute near Shanghai and contributed ten million euros.

Colani explained that he was better known and more recognized in Asia, especially in Japan, than in other parts of the world, by saying that for cultural and philosophical reasons, people there are more deeply connected with nature. Therefore one is far more open to his biomorphic design language than in the West.