Munari's Machines

By Bruno Munari. Published by Corraini

Hardcover, 28 pages, Colour, 1942 (2024 printing)

In this book, Bruno Munari describes, with great seriousness and abundance of detail, machines... useful or useless, certainly unusual: machines for predicting the dawn, a lizard motor for tired turtles, a machine for taming alarm clocks, a tail shaker for lazy dogs...

Munari's Machines is a poetic and ironic book that stands out for its inventiveness and creativity. Here Munari shows his ability to fuse art, design and didactics, presenting a series of imaginary machines inspired by the famous American cartoonist Rube Goldberg. Each machine, although the product of pure fantasy, is designed with a sense of realism and functionality, and reflects Munari's profound understanding of the world of design.

Munari's Machines - collected in this book first published by Einaudi in 1942 and available again in the Corraini Edizioni catalogue - are inventions that are as precise as they are impossible. Described and illustrated down to the smallest detail, Munari's machines follow their own fantastic mechanics and rebel, to our great amusement, against the obligation of having to serve something.