Behind Design Icons - Kartell Componibili
In 1967, Anna Castelli Ferrieri designed a storage unit that didn't look like storage at all. Three stacking drums, a swivel base, doors that click shut with a satisfying half-turn. Kartell has barely touched the design since. Today it sits in bathrooms, nurseries and design museums with equal confidence. Below, we take a closer look at the story behind the Componibili, and the injection-moulding breakthrough that made it possible.
A Problem, Not a Brief
Anna Castelli Ferrieri was an architect first, and it shows. She wasn't asked to design a storage unit. She was trying to solve the problem of clutter in small Italian apartments, where furniture had to do more with less space. The result wasn't a cabinet in the traditional sense - no back panel, no fixed shelves, nothing that had to go against a wall. It could sit in the middle of a room and still make sense. That was the point.
One Mould, Endless Configurations
The Componibili is built from ABS plastic, injection-moulded in a single piece per drum - no seams, no joins, no screws holding it together. That was the real innovation. Injection moulding was still finding its feet in furniture design in the late 1960s, and Castelli Ferrieri, working closely with Kartell's technical team, pushed it further than most were willing to. Each drum stacks on the next via a simple lip, and the whole unit rotates on its base, so what's stored inside is never more than a quarter-turn away.
The name itself is the giveaway: componibili, Italian for "can be put together." Two drums or three. Wheels or none. On its own or in a row. The design didn't dictate a single correct configuration, which is rare for a piece this recognisable.
The Base, Overlooked
Everyone remembers the drums. Fewer people clock the base, which does the quiet work of turning a stack of storage into something you'd actually want on show. The optional castors mean the whole thing can move with you round a room, a detail borrowed from hospital trolleys rather than domestic furniture, and one that hints at the Componibili's slightly clinical, no-nonsense root system. This was never meant to be precious.
What It Actually Costs to Get Right
An authentic Componibili, made by Kartell, will run you somewhere between £150 and £350 depending on configuration and colour. The price reflects what hasn't changed: the same ABS moulding process, the same tolerances that let the drums click together without wobble fifty-odd years on, and a finish that doesn't yellow or scratch the way a cheaper plastic would.
Copies are everywhere, and cheaply. A convincing one can be found for under £40. The tell is in the swivel, which loosens fast, and the plastic, which scratches within a season and never quite recovers its shine. None of this shows up on Instagram, which is exactly why the copies keep selling.
Why It Still Matters
The Componibili is one of the few design objects that made plastic feel aspirational rather than cheap, at a moment when plastic mostly meant cheap. The Eames Lounge Chair proved comfort could be a design language. The Componibili proved flexibility could be one too - storage that didn't ask you to commit to a layout before you'd lived in the space.
Over fifty years on, it's in MoMA's permanent collection, has been reissued in dozens of colourways, and still gets specified by architects who could choose anything. Castelli Ferrieri, as it happens, kept using the same one in her own studio for decades.
