A joyful embellishment made from cut and polished resin paste. Run your hand quickly over its structure and hear the alarm bells ringing. Definitive confirmation comes from the name, Radicàl Fake. And suddenly the desk with a bookcase by Patricia Urquiola for Cappellini appears in all its power: as a delightful interplay of stylistic quotations and optical illusions. It has the technical power to reproduce combinations of natural materials such as Venetian marble, as well as the second version of Fake in “oak wood”, and the visionary spirit that relates the project to the generalised focus on research by the radical movement.

With the result that this product has a substantially twofold surprise effect. On the one hand, the uncertain time frame typical of déjà vu, the doubt whether it is a vintage piece or not. On the other, the snobbish complacency of using a fashionable material synthesized in the laboratory. Two features that explain design today better than a book about the state of things in contemporary design. Which, for once, is not pegged to the 1940s or surrealist diversions.