In a new Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. First up: the humble mosquito coil, a lesson in design, climate and the art of living outdoors.
Carlo Ratti's 'Objectify' explores the mosquito coil
Summer has arrived. And with summer come the mosquitoes – buzz, buzz, buzz. From the plains or the marshes, from the seaside or the mountains, they turn up punctually at every outdoor party, like uninvited guests. And with climate change, it is easy to imagine they will keep knocking at our doors with ever-greater insistence.
The Anglo-Saxon approach to the summer mosquito is one of total war: seal the windows, lower the blinds, and turn the house into an artificial lung with air conditioning. In Italy, however, the response is different, more ambiguous and more theatrical. The windows are thrown open, the evening comes in, and the house becomes porous. It is a kind of climatic diplomacy, where the boundary between the living room and the night is constantly negotiated rather than rigidly defended. After experimenting with citronella candles (for the environmentalists) and anointing ourselves with chemical repellents (for those who trust in progress), lo and behold, we fall back on it: the mosquito coil.
Its origins date back to the second half of the nineteenth century in Venice, a place that knows a thing or two about mosquitoes. It was here that a pharmacist, Giovanni Battista Zampironi, began experimenting with powders made from Caucasian chrysanthemum, shaping them into small insect-repellent cones that burned slowly for about forty minutes. It was a start, but it required constant attention: every half hour, no matter how intimate the conversation, you had to light another one.
Then came the geometric breakthrough, imported from Japan. Yuki, the wife of an incense manufacturer, noticed a snake coiled on the ground and realized that by winding the material into a flat spiral, the smoke could last up to seven hours. Her name has largely been forgotten, but her insight is now a global standard, from Tokyo to Lagos, from São Paulo to Milan. In Italy, the object became a household name derived from its creator: the zampirone.
We might say its design is radical and minimalist. Once lit, it begins to work as an environmental filter, but also as a clock: the time of the evening is measured by the amount of spiral left and by that small ember flickering in the dark. The smoke it slowly releases is a thin line that redraws the boundary between humans and mosquitoes, between the living room and a wild night of bites.
We might also say that the zampirone is a typically Italian technology: the technology of compromise. It does not build a barrier, but creates a temporary condition of habitability. It is the opposite of the house promoted by the Modern Movement, born from the hygienist obsession that emerged after the 1918 pandemic and led to a sterilizing ideology: homes sealed against external agents, regulated access, the elimination of disorder. The zampirone, on the other hand, taps into an older tradition of coexisting with nature in all its forms, itchy or otherwise.
And perhaps that is precisely why it still feels so current, and so beloved. Until the fuse reaches its end. And then… boom! A new explosion of mosquitoes.
About 'Objectify' – a summer series from Italy by Carlo Ratti
Italy’s design canon has been told many times. The Bialetti moka pot, the Vespa, the Fiat 500, the Arco floor lamp: you know the list, and so does every airport bookshop and first-year design student. This column will discuss, poke, investigate, prod, ridicule and beatify the less glamorous Italian objects. They are the ones you ought to know, so that when you visit Italy, or spot apparitions of it on a friend’s social media, you can smugly point out: “Did you know the mosquito coil is a masterpiece of Italian design? The condom? The motorway toll transponder?” Objects so ordinary that Italians walk past them, or handle them every day, without registering that someone, with a mellifluous surname, designed them.
Carlo Ratti
Proust wrote a seven-volume novel because a small cake dipped in tea, the madeleine, unlocked an involuntary flood of memory. For followers of the Italian version of this column, published weekly in Il Sole 24 Ore, the nation’s favourite Sunday read, perhaps these objects will have a similar effect. For you, anglophone readers peering at this somewhere between Rummidge and Euforia, they offer something else: beach conversation topics, an eye trained on unexpected places, and perhaps a few new madeleines for when you visit the peninsula yourself. After all, objects are never just objects. As the great Milanese designer Achille Castiglioni of Arco-floor-lamp fame once declared: “Objects should keep us company.” Especially during this scorching summer.