When in 1984 Renato Pozzetto in the cult Italian comedy ‘Il Ragazzo di Campagna’ shot the iconic scene of the one-room apartment in which all the interiors are foldable in an ironic reflection on Milanese city life, he would perhaps not have imagined that in the future our everyday life would be profoundly populated by this idea of design.

Today, in fact, we wake up in beds that often fold up into sofas, we travel to work on folding electric means of transport such as e-bicycles and scooters. Those who use public transport, then, do so by taking out season tickets or contactless cards from foldable wallets, before sitting down in front of laptops that are also foldable. If leisure time is punctuated by reading, we are faced with some of the earliest and most classic examples of foldable design, while the slice of pizza folded in half consumed during the lunch break reminds us that man is almost instinctively oriented towards this solution. Not to mention the essential tool for our daily activities, from work to entertainment, which is the smartphone that has now also become foldable, such as the brand new Honor Magic Vs.

Yet, the history of foldable design has roots in the distant past. That is why, in light of our contemporary practices, it deserves to be rediscovered.

When Brionvega launched its ‘Dimensions Brionvega’ advertising campaign in 1971, presenting all its products in order of size, what truly caught the public’s attention was the smallest and most seemingly hidden of its designs: the TS207 radio. 

It was colourful, compact, handy, and foldable. A design solution that made it an instant classic, which today serves to remind us how the history of design is criss-crossed by small, folding revolutions.

It is as if each generation had its own foldable design icon that has become part of our lives, shaping memories and inevitably tying in with the evolution of our daily habits. Think, for example, of the room dividers that marked, for decades, a society in which nudity was taboo, even in married life, becoming an often exotic furnishing object but also a guardian of intimacy, of fantasies and seduction.

If those who grew up at the turn of the ‘60s and ‘70s associate Brionvega’s TS207 with a youth spent searching for the right frequency, to find out the score of a game or tune in to a pirate radio, for another couple of generations folding design is the Proustian madeleine that instantly brings one’s memories back to the afternoons spent playing Nintendo’s portable consoles, such as the Gameboy Advance SP (2003), DS (2004) and 3DS (2011). 

Similarly, Zanuso and Sapper’s 1967 Grillo landline phone for Siemens tells of times when people waited for hours sat next to the receiver for the call of a schoolyard crush, while the flip phones of the late 1990s and mid-2000s remind us of the first romantic texts cautiously sent in the early days of mobile telephony. 

On the other hand, foldability is an attribute that necessarily brings with it the concept of portability, of that dynamic and virtuous attitude that we now label as ‘on the go’. A vocation that responds to the needs of humans, nomadic since the dawn of time. Hence, it is no surprise that today’s urban mobility is dotted with electric scooters and folding bikes, such as those by Brompton and Tenways.

The technologies employed, the trends and devices evolve, but the design attitude remains unchanged. A game, as ancient and simple as origami, thus now becomes the inspiration for Alberto Meda’s eponymous folding room divider, produced by Tubes.

Folding design, we could argue, was born with purely pragmatic purposes, ending up shaping us and eventually becoming our extension, as functional as it is iconographic. 

In the best tradition of foldable design, the new Honor Magic Vs takes up a dual challenge, that of offering an extended surface for both work and entertainment, while responding to the need of today’s public for a return to compact and manageable devices, after years of hyperbolic escalation in size.

With a large screen, both when open and folded, it qualifies as the smartphone that meets the needs of the writer or worker on the move, but also of those who want a phone that is a companion for entertainment, reading and watching videos.

The design development is in fact among the most surprising elements of the phone, which, by reducing the structural components to 4 from the 92 of the previous generation, can rely on a super-light hinge that ensures up to 400,000 closures, meaning an average of 100 per day for more than ten years. 

On the other hand, it is not difficult to think of what can be considered its ancestor, the book, with its evolution of binding techniques. But also the newspaper, designed to be read, folded, carried in the hand, under the arm or in the pocket of a jacket. Yet the telephone today is also a jukebox always at hand, an evolution – one could argue – of the portable record players, such as those by Phillips, Dansette or Lesa, which first made it possible to listen to vinyl even outdoors, thanks to a system of cases, handles and hinges. 

Folding design is, even in the most seemingly anonymous examples, an integral part of our everyday life. Think of the chair, an interior design classic that turns into a pop icon when subtracted from the judges’ desk, folded and used, for example, as an entertainment tool in wrestling matches. 

The chair, changing in form and materials, has in fact continued to embody a classic folding design object, capable of harmonising functionality and aesthetic research through the centuries. There are 16th-century wooden ones, such as the one Lina Bo Bardi took with her to South America to furnish the Casa de Vidro in São Paulo, Brazil, but also the field chairs that were created for wartime purposes and later became design icons, such as Joseph B. Fenby’s Tripolina, which in turn inspired Vico Magistretti’s Kenya, although not foldable.

And, again, the director’s chair, source of a timeless iconography that we associate – among others – with Federico Fellini, but also Joe Colombo’s Multichair for B Line, or Giancarlo Piretti’s Plia, perhaps the most versatile and recognisable of these designs. 

Many are the recurring twists of such an approach to design, like the folding doors that distinguished many royal palaces and aristocratic mansions between the 16th and 19th century, then reinterpreted and distorted by Klemens Torggler with his Flip Panel Door. 

Interiors, as we know, are also a matter of trends. The fashion industry could not, in fact, avoid touching upon folding technology, making it one of its cornerstones. From Issey Miyake’s Bao Bao bag and Longchamp’s historic Pliage to Vibram’s Furoshiki footwear. It is no coincidence, after all, that the best trousers are those with a centre-crease.

How can we forget, then, sunglasses like the Persol 714, born as a folding and strictly functional accessory for Turin tram drivers in the 1950s and then elevated to one of the most recognisable frames thanks to Steve McQueen’s endorsement in ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’. 

Foldable could also be the society of the future, as suggested by the dystopian vision of the author Hao Jingfang, whose ‘Foldable Beijing’ (2012) portrays a metropolis folded into three parts divided by social class, in order to better manage the now scarce resources of the planet.

Today, society has assimilated folding technologies so much almost to the point of no longer realising it. The smartphone – which can be fully considered a technological extension of our consciousness – can be an important starting point to rekindle a discourse on this design philosophy, and also of life. As a matter of fact, Honor has just set an important new milestone in its evolution.