Colombo studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts to 1949, and then at the Politecnico di Milano, where he graduated in 1954. A proponent of the Movimento Nucleare, Colombo was active as an avant-garde painter and sculptor during his twenties. In 1953, he executed a ceiling design for a Milan Jazz club, and in 1954 designed three "television shrines"— outdoor installations showcasing television sets as miniature theaters—for the Triennale di Milano. He took up architecture in the late 1950's, designing a number of ski chalets and a condominium building. He briefly assumed control of the family electrical equipment business in 1959, using the factory as an experimental playground.

Colombo opened a design office in 1962, and over the next decade would produce a large body of innovative work. He theorized that technology would transform domestic life, and that the traditional room would give way to modular habitats—or, as he put it, "spaces conducive to meditation and experimentation, to intimacy and to interpersonal exchanges". Page 2 >