The industrial designer Richard Sapper, who has died aged 83, combined the rationality and technical virtuosity of German design and engineering with the flair and elegance of Italian styling. In a 60-year career, he applied his skills to a wide range of objects. In the process he promoted discipline in industrial design, reinforcing it as a highly respected profession, and gave the world some of its lasting 20th-century icons.
These included, most notably, the minimal Tizio lamp of 1972, designed for the Italian firm Artemide, and the witty 9091 Alessi kettle of 1983, which, on boiling, emits a harmonious whistle echoing that of an Amtrak train. Sapper did not have a personal style but all his designs were, and are, original and elegant. When he received an honorary degree from North Carolina State University, Sapper spoke of his upbringing in war-torn Germany and of the destruction and tragedy around him. He had seen it as an opportunity to do new things, he explained.
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