Omaggio a Fadat (Struttura 895) by Enzo Mari was a work creating ‘virtual volume’ through light, comprising 64 lamps and 64 switches mounted on acrylic and steel. It originated from Mari’s fascination with what he called ‘programmed art’ and ‘kinetic art’ — reported precursors to the computer-generated art flooding the internet today.
Struttura 895 was exhibited at Milan’s Galleria dell’Ariete Luce e movimento exhibition in 1967. That same year, Mari won his first Compasso d'Oro award, the oldest and most recognized international industrial design award; he ended up winning five over his lifetime.
One year later, in 1968, Domus Magazine profiled Mari, then in his mid-thirties: “Mari's concept of design can be summed up as technology plus an ideology that requires collective objects to be free from alienating superstructures. Opposed to... the constraints of psychological consumption, Mari aims to free things of their mere value as commodities and is only concerned with what they can communicate.”