Turin-based polymath Carlo Mollino lived and worked according to a provocative principle: “Everything is permissible as long as it is fantastic”. This credo was clearly reflected in his work. He brought the rationalist rigour of an engineer with the curiosity of a philosopher and the urbane sophistication of a bon vivant to all his endeavours - design, architecture, photography, racing, skiing and flying. When Mollino found an attractive 18th century apartment on a leafy bank of the river Po in Turin, he turned it into a garçonnière, or bachelor pad, though he actually never lived there. Between 1961 and 1970, he redesigned rooms as lavish, intricate settings for one of his more obsessive photographic interests, female portraits, adding to an already vast collection of erotica. And the images became even more explicit after he switched to Polaroid in 1963. One of Carlo Mollino’s masterpieces is the Teatro Regio (Royal Theatre) opera house in Turin, reopened in 1973 after a fire in 1936 destroyed everything except the façade. He designed the foyer, inspired by Piranesi’s architectural visions of the “Carceri”, and the sensuously curved auditorium. During my stay in Turin, I had also the pleasure of visiting another paragon of his extraordinary oeuvre which you can see on the following pages: Discoteca Le Roi, the club designed by Mollino in the former Lutrario cinema.