The boundaries between fashion, art and design can be blurry ones so it was no surprise when the Triennale Milano launched its own department dedicated to fashion in 2024, overseen by Luca Stoppini and former Wallpaper* Milan Editor Marco Sammicheli.

Established to research, archive and curate all things fashion-related, exploring the role it plays in the design world and promoting it in dialogue with schools and universities, the department’s latest project is a rethink of the Triennale’s uniforms in four key areas: for the cultural mediators who welcome visitors; for the security staff; for the team at Voce, the venue dedicated to music and sound; and for the staff at the two restaurants, Cucina and Terrazza.

To develop the creative side of the project, the Triennale brought on board former creative Gucci, Valentino and Tod’s creative director Alessandra Facchinetti, who took inspiration from workwear and the Bauhaus movement to develop a versatile, cross-functional design that fosters a sense of belonging, comfort and style.

‘My concept goes beyond that of traditional uniforms, which often lack identity and fail to create a cohesive image, in favour of a collection of garments and accessories aligned with the institution’s vision and values,’ says Facchinetti. ‘A uniform should not only identify the wearer, but also represent and strengthen the institution itself, striking a balance between function, practicality and aesthetics in a language that moves beyond role and becomes an everyday style code. The uniform serves as a visual and tangible expression of the museum’s identity, a recognisable and meaningful element that engages visitors and enhances their experience in shared spaces.’

Facchinetti chose to reflect on the very concept of the uniform, reinterpreting it to ensure recognisability without reducing it to a flat or generic design. Drawing on the geometric forms of the Triennale’s architecture, the visual identity of Cucina, with its Bauhaus-inspired graphic references, and the refined folding techniques found in traditional Italian table linens, the creative process gave rise to a distinctive signature triangular pleat that becomes the root of the uniform collection, appearing in pockets or on aprons.

The uniforms’ colour palette, meanwhile, nods to the tones of the Palazzo dell’Arte, the Triennale’s headquarters, ranging from the greys of the marble to the greens of the travertine. A burgundy vest was designed for the cultural mediators, with a colourful patch, in shades such as lime green and lilac, which can be attached to the pocket to identify different staff roles. Security staff uniforms are grey, as are those for Voce, though these also feature a fluorescent green print of the deconstructed Voce logo. The palette for Cucina is dominated by travertine green, paired with pearl grey, while Terrazza is dark brown, complemented by a warmer shade of grey. There are also separate designs for the catering and garden services.

The development and production of the uniforms was entrusted to Older Studio, the Danish-Italian company that specialises in forward-thinking uniform design. It translated the creative brief into the final product, overseeing the entire process from pattern making and prototyping to material sourcing and management of a fully sustainable supply chain. All materials used for the uniforms are woven and sourced in Italy, while each garment is produced in Europe and shipped in compostable packaging.

triennale.org

To celebrate the launch of its latest collection, ‘Twisted Flower', at Milan Design Week, Kvadrat pays homage to one of textile design's unsung heroes, Frans Dijkmeijer, a Dutch-born artist whose technical prowess combined warp and weft into increasingly imaginative structural compositions. A two-part event will encompass an immersive, multidisciplinary exhibition at Triennale Milano, curated by Marco Sammicheli, and an installation at Kvadrat's Corso Monforte showroom, led by colour expert Giulio Ridolfo and designed by Binocle.

Frans Dijkmeijer: a life in textiles

Sammicheli describes Dikjmeijer's work as ‘textile tectonics', as each pattern he created was driven by structure and mathematical thinking, composition and variation. The multiple possible combinations of weft and warp are what interested him most; it's likely that he was colour blind, says Sammicheli, hence his lack of interest in colour, and most of his woven samples are based on a very simplistic palette of contrasting yarns in white, blue and black.

Dijkmeijer started his career in the 1950s, working for six decades for some of the most renowned textile brands, including Kendix, Artex and De Ploeg. ‘I think of him as a scientist, because he worked by unfolding the possibilities inside a single idea,' says Stine Find Osther, Kvadrat's vice president of design.

Among her fondest memories of the company's collaboration with the designer (which continued until his death in 2011) is the day he would send samples of his work to the Ebeltoft HQ for the weavers to replicate and develop them into commercial textiles. ‘They were small, plain white envelopes, filled with all of these tiny, wildly complex and fascinating weaving samples. Before even opening them, we just knew that we would find beauty.' Find Osther explains how he would start his work as an idea on the loom, and then go on to create dozens (sometimes hundreds) of non-identical repeats exploring the same idea.

Dijkmeijer began collaborating with Kvadrat in 1992, but his textiles didn't have commercial success until 2004, which coincided with Giulio Ridolfo also starting to work with the company. Ridolfo came from a fashion background (he has a degree in fashion design from Milan's Domus Academy) and had designed and produced fabrics for brands such as Vitra and Moroso, one of Kvadrat's long-term collaborators, through which he connected with CEO Anders Byriel.

Meeting Dijkmeijer marked the beginning of Ridolfo's collaboration with Kvadrat and of him becoming one of the design world's most respected colourists. The first textile collaboration between Ridolfo and Dijkmeijer was ‘Steelcut', which is still regarded as one of Kvadrat's masterpieces. Featuring a surface that resembles small raised pyramids, its intricate construction is balanced by a simple visual expression, amplified by Ridolfo's interpretation, which enhanced its aesthetic intensity.

Through their collaboration, the colour maestro connected with Dijkmeijer on a deeper level than just practical and professional. Dijkmeijer had a strong passion for botany, for example: it wasn't an element that ever entered his work, but Ridolfo was able to introduce that shared enthusiasm for nature's light and hues into their textiles, and so make them accessible to the wider public. ‘I didn't want to be a shock to his work, but a polite intervention,' says Ridolfo. ‘I work like a restorer, bringing light back to the textile.' Speaking different languages – that of weaving and colours – made the collaboration meaningful in a way that might not have occurred had they shared more of their professional tools. ‘Giulio was able to make a harmony out of Dijkmeijer's work, like a musical arrangement of variations that made his textiles speak,' says Sammicheli.

One of the most fascinating facets of Dijkmeijer's personality was his passion for collecting. His chateau in Cestayrols, France, is like a cabinet of curiosities, filled with eclectic assemblages of his objects. He travelled the world in search of inspiration, and brought back the things he found, something that is also true of Ridolfo – Sammicheli likens them both to pilgrims in that respect. ‘Dijkmeijer's collecting was an incredibly accessible, human gesture,' says the curator. Scattered in neat displays across the chateau are Moroccan ceramics, textiles from Africa, toys, kites, shells, postcards, religious icons, woven baskets and lace samples. ‘They give us a pretty good idea of how he fed his imagination.'

A Milanese tribute to Frans Dijkmeijer's legacy

After his death, Dijkmeijer's wife Marianne drove his archives to Kvadrat's HQ, where they have remained ever since (‘I think they will forever be a source of inspiration for us,' notes Find Osther).

For the first time, a sample of this inspirational body of work is available for the public to discover through the Triennale exhibition. Titled ‘Frans Dijkmeijer: The Silent Pioneer', the exhibition will be the first time his work is presented to the public. Despite having been at the forefront of textile production for the best part of the 20th century and until his death, he is, in fact, barely known outside of textile circles. ‘The care for remembering and attributing value to all those who contribute to a project is, alas, a recent practice,' observes Sammicheli, whose curatorial practice has always veered towards the holistic. ‘The exhibition is born from the company's wish to recognise his role not only in the history of Kvadrat, but in a wider context.'

The display, conceived by Jacob Manz, senior manager of spatial design at Kvadrat, is based on a series of cardboard displays that encourage discovery, showing hundreds of woven squares from Dijkmeijer's experiments alongside objects from his collection.

To bring to life the plethora of influences at the core of this story, Sammicheli commissioned three contemporary artists working in different media to create new work for the exhibition. The interventions by algorithmic musician Renick Bell, visual artist Valentina Furian, and designer Francesco Tosini combine electronic music composition, computer graphics, digital animation and video art to bring to life themes that were central to Dijkmeijer's life and practice, such as repetition, pattern and botany.

Meanwhile, the Kvadrat showroom will be dedicated to the launch of ‘Twisted Flower', based on a Dijkmeijer weave with a chromatic concept by Ridolfo inspired by the gesture of gently twisting a blossom between two fingers. This reference results in a weave done with a two-tone yarn that is twisted to create a dynamic, unexpected rhythm on the material's surface. Ridolfo's ‘textile bouquet' is based on hues that merge neutrals and botanicals, ranging from base shades to vivid tones such as Ceanothus blue and Gossypium yellow. The showroom concept is based on a series of canopies imagined like ‘gentle shelters', where visitors are invited to sit and contemplate the material and colour.

‘I always say Frans was a Renaissance man,' says Ridolfo. ‘Through his work, he has been able to bring extreme innovation to extremely traditional looms. He worked like an explorer, traversing unknown fields, knowing he would always arrive at something that would represent him.'

On show from 20-26 April, ‘Frans Dijkmeijer: The Silent Pioneer' at Triennale Milano, Viale Emilio Alemagna 6, In Rainbows by Giulio Ridolfo' at the Kvadrat showroom, Corso Monforte 15

Most people think of Ray and Charles Eames as seminal furniture designers who also produced experimental films from time to time. They built their own home – the emblematic Eames House in Pacific Palisades, California – but the general perception is that it was a one-and-done. Few know that the influential duo designed a slew of homes and had a larger goal of developing a universal architectural system that could be accessible to almost anyone and introduced almost anywhere.

The Eames Pavilion System by Kettal: have your own Eames House

Debuting as part of a special Triennale di Milano exhibition – ‘The Eames Houses’ – opening during Milan Design Week 2026 in April, the Eames Pavilion System is a fully functional prefab home solution fulfilling that previously unrealised ambition. Developed by the Eames Office in partnership with Spanish outdoor furniture brand Kettal, the comprehensive kit-of-parts product stems from intensive research into the Eameses' overall vision. The project – one that’s both commercial and cultural – is particularly relevant in view of the worsening global housing crisis.

‘I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with the idea of the house being a singularity,' says Eames Demetrios, Ray and Charles’ grandson and director of the Eames Office, a continuation of their studio and a platform mandated with the preservation of their multifaceted legacy. 'It was such an integral extension of everything else they did. There’s always been this question out there: could the Eames House be copied, and the answer is yes, but the first thing one would need to do is build a hill so they could put it next to it. Is that really where they’d want to put their energy, and is creating a facsimile really the point?’ This fresh offering is much more of a reinterpretation of the Eames House, embracing the big ideas it represents.

It was originally developed as part of the Case Study Houses project – 30 or so distinct home concepts constructed throughout Los Angeles in the late 1940s using inexpensive materials. ‘The proposition was that one could visit different properties and have their builders collage elements from the different designs that worked best for them,’ says Demetrios. He notes that, between 1945 and 1948, more than 350,000 people walked through the first six prototype properties to be completed – a considerable proportion of the fewer than two million living in the city at the time. There was something inherently democratic and yet self-deterministic about the programme. The new Eames Pavilion System embodies that versatility and ethos.

Dissecting the principles of the Eameses’ architecture

Central to the initial research project – led by product strategist Eckart Maise – was the distilling of the fundamental strategies and components that not only define the original Eames House but also the surprisingly different in appearance Case Study House No. 9 (the Entenza), Shelter House, and De Pree House.

‘We did a typological study of all the homes the Eameses designed, even ones constructed using post and beam timber, and uncovered commonalities in modularity and segmentation,’ says Maise. ‘This allowed us to turn these prototypes into a product and system that’s actually more strict than the original Eames House. What we did is make it more universal and aligned with what Charles Eames is quoted as having said: that the rigidity of a system is responsible for opening up all the possibilities of working with that system afterwards.’

Harnessing Kettal’s expertise in metal fabrication – one it hones through its lesser-known outdoor pavilion business – all parts were brought up to present-day standards. Steel was replaced by far more weather-resistant aluminium, and single-pane windows were replaced by triple glazing.

The simplified yet more agile kit-of-parts product comprises aluminium ‘I’ and ‘H’ beams infilled by glass, polycarbonate, and wood insert panels. When fully available to the market in early 2027 – as a single unit, a double module, and a multi-bay configuration – the Eames Pavilion System will be fully insulated and conducive to various climatic conditions. A 2mx2m-grid room-with-in-a-room interior application will hit the market at the end of 2026.

As Demetrios notes, most prefab products available today are often sent to site and require bespoke alterations, which actually defeats the purpose. Factored into the Eames Pavilion System service is the attention of a well-trained Kettal expert, who will be sent out to assess conditions before the structure is configured and components manufactured.

To have the global design industry make the critical link between the Eameses’ architectural and furniture practice – one that actually transcended these limited disciplinary definitions – Eames Office and Kettal chose to launch the system during Milan Design Week 2026. The Triennale di Milano exhibition will feature a fully realised two-story structure and another 'exploded parts' version, demonstrating how the components can be assembled.

The former will be outfitted just as Ray and Charles Eames would have done it. Carefully selected archival materials –presented as reproductions – and a closely curated timeline will help contextualise everything. A soon-to-be released interior design book, The Eames Houses from Phaidon (available to pre-order), will do the same.

'Architecture was foundational to Charles and Ray’s practice,' says Maise. 'Their systemic architectural thinking shaped everything they did. Through rigorous, in-depth archival investigation, we uncovered a wealth of material – drawings, studies, and proposals – that had remained largely unseen. Introducing ‘The Eames Houses’ – both the exhibition and the book – and partnering with Kettal allow their ideas to move from the archive into contemporary living, situating their thinking firmly in the present.'

‘The Eames Houses’, 20 April – 10 May 2026, Triennale Milano, Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6

A few dozen metres from the Triennale Milano Design Museum, in the centre of the sprawling Sempione Park, high-vis-vested construction workers scurried between a forest of cranes, putting the final touches on what, in a few days, will become the Olympic Fan Zone, where attendees will convene to celebrate and watch the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.

All across the city, similar sites were taking shape – from the Santa Giulia ice-hockey rink in the city’s south-east to the San Siro Stadium, where the Opening Ceremony will be held on 6 February. The Triennale, too, was teeming with technicians and installers this past Tuesday morning (27 January), getting ready to open a slate of new exhibitions in time for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. Among them is ‘White Out: The Future of Winter Sports’ (until 15 March 2026), an exhibition curated by the German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic and Triennale’s design director Marco Sammicheli.

‘White Out: The Future of Winter Sports’ at Triennale Milano

'It felt very natural for us to make a contribution during the Olympics,' Grcic told Wallpaper* during the opening of the exhibition. 'We focused specifically on winter-sports-related design projects. And as a designer, the relationship between design and sport is always extremely attractive and interesting. Sports equipment was my first design teacher. Before I even studied design, I was fascinated by it – it’s always tied to performance and function.'

The exhibition is organised into nine different sections: Skins, Dainese, Safety, Infrastructure, Bob Track, Ski, Extremes, Futures, and Material Index. Each section displays a range of innovative objects and ideas that have shaped winter sports over the past several decades.

For instance, the section Skins, which greets visitors at the entrance of the exhibition, presents three glass vitrines containing a trio of kits that once belonged to elite athletes. Among them are alpine skier Federica Brignone’s jumpsuit, helmet, goggles, mittens, boots and back protector – designed to shield her spine in case of high-speed accidents – allowing visitors to imagine the 5ft 4in athlete’s body racing down a mountainside at breakneck speeds. 'The idea was to present the real objects,' said Grcic. 'The actual equipment athletes use.'

Along the circular route of the exhibition, similar high-tech gear is available to see up close. There’s a prototype of the Arc’teryx x Skip Mo/Go, a carbon-fibre exoskeleton resembling a knee brace, which helps propel its wearer uphill while hiking to reduce fatigue. Adjacent is a gleaming metal artificial knee implant by Zimmer Biomet, which stabilises the fragile joint after injury.

For Grcic, the value of staging an exhibition like this lies in the fact that sport often becomes a proving ground for new ideas. 'Sport has always been a pioneering domain for technology and design,' he acknowledges. 'If you think about people’s acceptance of radical design, they are far more open to it when it comes to sports equipment than, say, when they are buying a chair.'

Elsewhere in the exhibition, attention shifts beyond sport to the very real risks involved with inhabiting the mountains. From Recco handheld rescue detectors, which aid search-and-rescue efforts after avalanches, to inflatable vests that protect athletes from traumatic falls. Beyond the equipment on display, however, ‘White Out’ also tackles the larger issues that shape – and even threaten – the existence of winter sports. In the section dedicated to infrastructure, questions of mobility, sustainability and climate change come to the fore.

'This isn’t only about equipment. It’s about infrastructure: how we design ski resorts, how people get there and return, and how we intervene in nature in a way that is acceptable,' explains Grcic. 'What’s interesting is that the biggest environmental problem for winter-sports resorts is not artificial snow, or even the physical impact of lifts on the landscape. It’s car traffic going into and out of resorts. That also implies a relatively simple solution: creating strong public transport links to these resorts could make a significant difference.'

With these concerns in mind, for the final section of the exhibition, the curators commissioned the American media artist Scott Cannon to create an AI-generated animation depicting a speculative future in the year 2100. In it, ski- and snowboard-toting travellers board a Shinkansen-style high-speed train, which deposits them in the centre of a mountain town. From there, they move around futuristic-looking structures embedded in the landscape, imagining a future that reconciles the desires of sports enthusiasts with the fragility of a changing environment.

'The elephant in the room is climate change,' reflects Grcic on the subject, noting the precariousness of a sport and its related industries that rely on an increasingly volatile environment. 'We have to ask ourselves what we are really talking about here. Is winter sport just a pleasant but temporary form of entertainment that will soon disappear, or does it have a future – a positive future – that responds intelligently to these challenges?'

‘White Out: The Future of Winter Sports’ is on view until 15 March 2026

triennale.org

The story of Massimo Vignelli and Lella Vignelli is, at its heart, a love story, but also a professional union that reshaped international design culture for more than half a century. Two ambitious Italian-born architects met at an architects' convention in 1951, married in 1957, and went on to leave an indelible mark on everything from corporate identity and furniture to the wayfinding systems of modern cities.

Although both were educated in Italy, it was New York – where they settled permanently in 1965 – that became their principal laboratory. From the New York City subway map and signage system to Bloomingdale’s now-iconic shopping bags, Knoll furniture, and the quietly radical interior of St Peter’s Church on Lexington Avenue, the Vignellis’ work embedded itself so deeply into everyday life that it often became invisible. Which, in many ways, was the point.

Ahead of the major retrospective, ‘Lella e Massimo Vignelli’, opening at Triennale Milano on 25 March 2026, we look back over a body of work that consistently resisted fashion, distrusted trendiness, and pursued clarity with near-moral conviction.

Made in Italy: formation and early practice

The Vignellis’ story unfolds between Milan and New York. Both born into families of architects – Massimo Vignelli in 1931 in Milan, and Lella Vignelli (born Elena Valle) in 1934 in Udine – it seemed almost inevitable that they would follow a similar path. At the time, there were no dedicated schools of design; instead, architects, Massimo later recalled, were expected to design everything from ‘the spoon to the city’.

While Massimo studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and later at the Università IUAV di Venezia, Lella trained as an architect at IUAV before completing a fellowship at MIT. Milan in the postwar decades – animated by cultural revival and industrial optimism – formed the backdrop to their early thinking.

As a teenager, Massimo worked briefly as a draftsman in the studio of the Castiglioni brothers, before undertaking part-time work at the Murano glassworks of his close friend Paolo Venini while still a student, producing early glass designs that marked the beginning of his sustained engagement with industrial production.

Coming to America: design at scale

Shortly after their marriage in 1957, the Vignellis moved to the United States for three years – one spent in Boston, where Massimo undertook a fellowship with Towle Silversmiths in Newburyport, Massachusetts, designing cutlery and domestic objects, and two in Chicago, where he taught at the Institute of Design and worked as a designer at Container Corporation of America.

The couple returned to Milan in 1960, opening an office for design and architecture, with Massimo teaching graphic design in Milan and Venice. Just five years later, they returned to the US once more, this time settling in New York, where Massimo was appointed to lead the local office of Unimark International, the design consultancy he had co-founded with, among others, Dutch graphic designer Bob Noorda.

From this point, New York became their permanent base. Their work increasingly focused on large-scale graphic systems, corporate identity and public commissions – areas in which clarity, consistency and organisation were central concerns – reflecting Massimo’s oft-stated belief that 'if you can design one thing, you can design everything'.

Instinct over consensus

During a talk at Design Indaba in 2007, Massimo Vignelli spoke about the importance of finding what he called 'good clients' – not those seeking novelty, but those willing to take risks and trust judgement. It was a lesson learned early. While in the US on his fellowship in the late 1950s, Massimo designed a set of glass and silverware vessel prototypes that were rejected as unsuitable for the American market. Undeterred, he took the designs back to Europe, where they were picked up by Venini and Christofle and produced for decades (and remain popular on vintage sites). The experience cemented a lifelong distrust of market research and a belief in instinct over consensus.

This approach underpinned many of the Vignellis’ most influential commissions. At Unimark International, and later through Vignelli Associates (founded in New York in 1971), they developed corporate identities defined by restraint and internal logic. The American Airlines logo of 1967 – unchanged for nearly half a century – was conceived as a clear, durable branding system. 'How can you improve it?' Massimo later asked.

Systems over style

Perhaps nowhere was this thinking more visible than in the Vignellis’ work for the New York City subway signage and map introduced 1970. Rather than treating signage and mapping as isolated graphics, they approached the transit system as a total information environment. Stations were assigned colours and dots; typography was standardised. The diagrammatic map – later criticised for its abstracted geography – nevertheless set a benchmark for thinking about navigation as a design problem rather than a purely cartographic one.

This commitment to systems extended across disciplines. For Knoll, the Vignellis developed not only furniture but a complete graphic and spatial language. For Bloomingdale's, they rejected a conventional logo entirely, opting instead for bold typographic treatments on brightly coloured bags and boxes – a brand treatment that became instantly recognisable,

Against trend, against obsolescence

The Vignellis decried ‘trends’ and abhorred designed obsolescence, which Massimo famously described as 'a social crime'. They viewed design as a long-term responsibility, arguing that objects and systems should endure both physically and intellectually. This position put them firmly at odds with postmodernism, which Massimo dismissed as a culture of metaphor and surface play.

Instead, they returned repeatedly to geometry – the cube, the sphere, the pyramid – and to a limited palette of materials and typefaces. 'I see graphic design as the organisation of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistent, and pragmatically understandable,' Massimo once wrote. 'I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless.'

This ethos shaped a new generation of designers who were either taught by Vignelli or passed through the studio, most notably Michael Bierut, who worked with the Vignellis for a decade. Writing in Massimo’s obituary for Design Observer, Bierut reflected: 'I learned how to be a designer from Massimo Vignelli.'

Designed by Lella

For decades, like in many male-female design partnerships of the 20th century, Lella Vignelli’s role was too often framed as collaborative rather than authoritative. In reality, it was both. At Vignelli Associates, she served first as executive vice president and later as chief executive officer, overseeing operations while maintaining an active design practice. In 1978, the couple founded Vignelli Designs, a company dedicated to product and furniture design, with Lella as president.

Massimo was regarded as the extrovert, while Lella, quieter, more poised, was the level-headed one. In an interview with Design Observer, the pair explained why their differences were a strength. 'I am practical, Massimo is creative, but he is disorganised,' noted Lella. Massiomo added, 'Lella is my brake, my reality, I could not have done this without her.'

In Designed by: Lella Vignelli, published in 2013 and marking five decades of their partnership, Massimo explicitly acknowledged the historical erasure of women’s contributions within mixed-gender studios. He cited partnerships such as Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand, and Charles and Ray Eames – collaborations long recognised but rarely credited with equal authority. The book deliberately foregrounded projects authored entirely by Lella alongside those produced jointly, repositioning her not as a supporting figure but as a designer of independent vision, authority and rigour.

Designing behaviour, not just things

Across furniture, interiors and exhibitions, the Vignellis returned to the idea of involving the user. Tables with interchangeable bases, modular seating, and adaptable store layouts all reflected what they described as a constant oscillation 'between identity and diversity'. Their design for the interior of St Peter’s Church in New York exemplifies this thinking. Conceived around a central altar, the church features movable pews and a baptismal font encircled by steps, allowing the space to be reconfigured according to use – a radical idea within a typology traditionally defined by fixity.

Even in domestic objects, the same logic applied. Oven dishes where the rim became a handle; stacking tableware designed for efficiency rather than display; furniture intended to sit in the middle of a room rather than against a wall. These were not stylistic gestures, but attempts to align form with lived behaviour.

Legacy

In 2000, when the lease expired on their large office on Tenth Avenue, the Vignellis chose to downsize dramatically, reducing the studio from around 50 people to just themselves and three others, while continuing to work at the same intensity. Their professional partnership, spanning more than five decades, was later brought to an abrupt end when Lella was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, with Massimo becoming her carer in the final years of their lives.

Massimo Vignelli died in 2014, aged 83, and Lella followed two years later, in 2016, at the age of 82. Yet the ideas they articulated – about responsibility, clarity and generosity – continue to circulate widely. Less a legacy of individual masterpieces than of a way of thinking, their work reminds us that the most enduring design is often the least conspicuous: the systems we move through daily, the objects that earn our trust, and a belief that good design, done properly, should feel as though it has always been there.

‘Lella e Massimo Vignelli’ runs from 25 March to 6 September 2026, Triennale Milano, Viale Alemagna 6, Milan

Triennale Milano unveiled a new creative space for children. Gioco, which means 'game' in Italian, is designed to be a space for kids to let their imagination and creativity flow freely, surrounded by different kinds of activities, both active and contemplative.

Discover Gioco at Triennale Milano

Gioco is part of the redesign of Piano Parco, a renovated space which opened to the public last May. It includes events and workshops run by the Triennale Education Department (a research centre part of the cultural institution that is Triennale Milano), but it is also encouraged for families to make free use of the space.

The design of the space was entrusted to architect Luca Cipelletti (he also designed Cucina Triennale, which opened this summer) who worked closely with French design studio Smarin, specialising in furnishings designed for interaction.

Stepping into the space, visitors will see a series of modular furniture consisting of cork blocks and flat surfaces in pine. The choice of materiality was based heavily on sustainability, longevity, and sensory qualities. Each piece was assembled without nails or screws, allowing for blocks to be dismantled and used as desks and seats, partitions, storage units, and play structures.

Furthermore, due to the interchangeable quality of the furniture, the space can be adapted to different environments. This can vary from a play area, a dance studio (by stacking the blocks for example), or even a workspace.

Accessorising the space are multiple playthings, such as modules and tools to accompany imaginative playing and building. There are also nooks for children to enjoy a library of picture books in English, Italian, and Italian sign language.

The design is a reflection of its location, making sure the needs for museum visitors with children are met. The new Gioco space is a playful example of functional design which accommodates both adults and children.

Gioco is open from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Triennale Milano, viale Alemagna 6, 20121 Milano triennale.org

When designing Cucina Triennale, the new restaurant and café for the Milanese design institution, architect Luca Cipelletti and his studio looked to the Triennale archives for inspiration. Discovering drawings of the original tables designed in 1933 by Gigiotti Zanini for the restaurant, the studio, aided by the Molteni Group’s contemporary furniture brand UniFor, were entrusted with reissuing the design, blending historical memory with contemporary technology.

Cucina Triennale opens in Milan

Located on the Piano Parco and overlooking the Triennale garden, the new restaurant also includes a new seating design, the ‘Triennale Chair’, created by Studio Klass and made by UniFor as a contemporary reinterpretation of the building’s historic furnishings. Made entirely of wood, stackable, practical and clean in design, the chair stands out for its balance of solidity and refinement.

Fixed bespoke elements, designed by Cipelletti and crafted by the Italian furniture company, include a large slatted oak counter, enhanced with four glass shelves and a door with an integrated mechanism, combining functional rigour with formal coherence. Along the walls, six niches unfold, each equipped with full-height wardrobes, low cabinets, glass shelves, mirrors and fixed panels, all finished in brown-stained oak. Completing the renovation are two slatted oak cloakrooms, with counters featuring lacquered fronts and pivot doors, designed to ensure functionality, accessibility and overall visual harmony.

The new restaurant – an airy, light-filled space that spills out into the surrounding gardens – is part of a wider redevelopment of the Triennale, also overseen by Cipelletti in collaboration with UniFor, which aims to restore the original spaces in continuity with Giovanni Muzio’s 1933 design. And it makes the perfect spot for a pre-theatre show dinner or a relaxed lunch with friends.

Triennale Milano
Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6
20121 Milano

triennale.org

Wallpaper’s exhibition for Milan Design Week 2025 took up residence in a sweeping celestial space in the Triennale, a museum that's the home of design, in the world’s design capital, no less. ‘Material Alchemists’ (of which we gave a brief overview at the time) brought together the work of 20 emerging designers and studios, each demonstrating a passion and prowess for material exploration in their practice. Fittingly, we partnered for the show with StoneX, a global patron and purveyor of the world’s rarest natural stone.

Here, coinciding with our annual Design Directory issue, on sale now, and its look back at Milan Design Week highlights, we delve into the material alchemy behind the show in a new video (see above – Wallpaper* interiors editor Olly Mason and I were filmed at the Triennale) and showcase the work of our exhibitors (below) – a truly global collective, together forming our ‘Class of ’25’.

Hailing from as far afield as Antwerp to Adelaide, and from Vancouver to Vietnam, their creative identities, born through upbringing, education and professional practice, all feed into their perspectives on life. Working with everything from paper and plastic to rope and raffia, they stood out for their inherent curiosity about how matter can be coaxed, manipulated and transformed to become something so much greater than we might expect.

Our exhibits spanned a spectrum from craft and artworks to high-performing quotidian objects, revealing an interplay between expression, process and function. As such, ‘Material Alchemists’ reflected our evolved understanding of the power and potential of design: it is no longer an industry, but rather a force that both encompasses and expands all aspects of creative endeavour in the service of experimentation, improvement and progress.

Meet our 20 ‘Material Alchemists’ through their designs

Kodai Iwamoto, Morii Design, and Yoon Shun

Kodai Iwamoto 'Arrow’ floor lamp

Tokyo-based designer Kodai Iwamoto’s lamp is made from aluminium, a commonly used construction material in Japan. However, by carving it with a hand planer and hammering it into shape, it begins to exude a minimal beauty akin to sculpture. @kodaiiwamoto

Morii Design ‘Chir Batti’ textile

Gujarat studio Morii Design was founded in 2019 with a deep reverence for Indian craftsmanship and contemporary design sensibility. This textile uses Rabari embroidery on handwoven kala cotton, indigenous to the Kutch region. @morii.design

Yoon Shun ‘Goshun’ bench

Antwerp-based designer Yoon Shun creates objects that achieve a balance between raw essence and refinement. His bench is made by lightly charring the oak surface, then finishing it with layers of tung oil, giving the wood an almost wet appearance. @yoon.shun

Federico Stefanovich, and Dina Nur Satti

Federico Stefanovich ‘Folia’ wall lamps

Mexican designer Federico Stefanovich’s wall lamps are crafted from cast bronze and aged brass to give off a soft, indirect light that highlights the raw beauty of the materials, showcasing their natural patinas. @federico.stefanovich

Dina Nur Satti ‘Shendi’ / ‘Ripple Lotus’ vessels

Originally from Sudan and Somalia, Brooklyn-based ceramic artist Dina Nur Satti makes clay vessels using the coiling method. Each piece is burnished with a river stone, a traditional method to smooth its surface. @dinanursatti

Marc Sweeney

Marc Sweeney ‘Ingot’ chair

Loch Lomond native Marc Sweeney’s chair is made from a condemned aluminium boat gangway, each piece cast, open-mould, at a precise temperature to preserve the top pour surface of the metal. The tension lends a playful inflated quality to an otherwise geometric form. @marc__sweeney

Michelle Jiaxin Huang

Michelle Jiaxin Huang

Vancouver-based artist and designer Michelle Jiaxin Huang’s piece considers how materials function as active participants in constructing meaning. Through the process of inflation, steel is transformed, allowing for the object to transcend its earthly materiality. @michjxh

Alfred Lowe

Alfred Lowe ‘Idols 411-24’ ceramics

Adelaide artist Alfred Lowe’s work explores identity and his relationship with the landscape, as well as his life as a First Nations person. He uses clay and fibre to hand build forms, applying underglazes and a range of mark-making and woven fibre elements to the surface. @aforalfie

Miranda Keyes

Miranda Keyes Candelabra

Miranda Keyes founded her London glass studio in 2018 to serve as a test bed for new and intuitive approaches to the medium. Her candelabra series with artist Karum Friel focuses on the synthesis of aluminium and glass to transcend the material limits of both. @miranda.keyes

Jiri Krejcirik

Jiri Krejcirik ‘Kalokagathos’ table

Prague-based designer Jiri Krejcirik reimagines European cultural heritage through a contemporary lens. His table was handcrafted from ash using traditional Czech woodworking techniques, then hand-sanded, stained green and coated with a transparent matte lacquer. @jiri_krejcirik

Sheyang Li

Sheyang Li ‘Elemental Patchwork’ table lamp

The Eindhoven-based Sheyang Li works with cast aluminium for its versatility in form and its sustainable sourcing from a scrapyard near his studio. His lamp appears chaotic yet is imbued with an intentionality that serves as a reflection on the unpredictable nature of life. @_sheyang_

Ajay Shah

Ajay Shah ‘Sit’ bench

Mumbai-based designer Ajay Shah founded his furniture brand Industrial Playground in 2008, its collections characterised by graphic forms, a material construct and a bold use of colour. His bench is made from fibreglass, which allows for complex form development. @ajayshah @industrialplayground

Lennart Engels

Lennart Engels ‘Altar’ modular candelabra

Lennart Engels focuses on material innovation and experimentation under the banner of his Helsinki-based Sauna Stone Lab studio. His candelabra are crafted from a geopolymer material that he developed using discarded public sauna stones. @lennart.engels @saunastonelab

Abid Javed

Abid Javed ‘3-Way Junction VI’ / ‘Endosome XVI’ ceramics

East London-based sculptor and designer Abid Javed imagines abstract, biomorphic forms inspired by biological narratives. His sculptures are primarily coiled by hand. When sanded, their white ceramic surfaces gain a soft luminescence that’s reminiscent of stone sculptures. @abid.jav

Liam Fleming

Liam Fleming Transitory Vessels

Liam Fleming is based in Adelaide, where his rule-breaking experimentation into glassblowing sees him breaking down the boundaries between art, design and architecture. His abstract, curvaceous vessels drape and fold, at once both daringly playful and elegantly precise. @fleming_liam

Pauline Leprince

Pauline Leprince ‘05-FP-23’ chair/side table

Paris-based designer Pauline Leprince’s creations often blur the lines between art, architecture and storytelling. Her stainless steel side tables, seating and tabletop objects invite users to engage with space, form and materiality in new ways. @_pauline.leprince

Astraeus Clarke, and Agnes Studio

Astraeus Clarke ‘Darning’ chandelier

Founded in 2022 by Chelsie and Jacob Starley, New York creative studio Astraeus Clarke specialises in lighting fixtures. Its chandelier, which features two laser-cut metal tubes sewn together with cord and a calfskin parchment shade, marries craftsmanship and innovation. @astraeusclarke

Agnes Studio ‘Obsidiana’ bench

Based in Guatemala City, Agnes Studio, the design practice of Estefanía de Ros and Gustavo Quintana-Kennedy, explores and defies the boundaries of traditional and experimental craft. Its bench, made from solid oak tinted with natural food dye, pays homage to earth and nature. @agnesstudio.co

Steffany Tran

Steffany Tran ‘Re Cây’ lighting collection

The founder of New York- and Vietnam-based design studio Vy Voi, Steffany Tran’s lighting collection pairs a ceramic base with a lampshade made of dó, a heritage paper handmade in Vietnam, creating quietly compelling objects that feel both familiar yet contemporary. @vyvoistudio

Olorunfemi Adewuyi

Olorunfemi Adewuyi ‘Omi Series 2’ stool

The founder of Lagos-based studio Omi Collective, designer Olorunfemi Adewuyi explores timber, in both slender and chunkier forms, which he then elevates by incorporating metal hardware, from brass and bronze to copper, cast in a foundry in Benin City. @olorunfemi.adewuyi

Also see our photographic ode to Milan Design Week

Exhibition coordinator: Ian Cibic

Lighting assistants: Luca Baldini, Alessio Pinna

Digital assistant: Marella Bessone

Assistant: Isabella Casiraghi

Retouching: Studio Wolfram

Every three years, design institution Triennale Milano offers up its 1930s Palazzo dell’Arte building to a single topic. The last two themes of Milan’s long-standing International Exhibition were Unknown Unknowns and Broken Nature, with this 24^th edition contending with the global issue of Inequality through a breadth of design inquiry encompassing architecture, art, products, technology, and data.

The theme of Inequalities was introduced last year at a conference in which many of the participants presented their research, ideas, and political frustrations. Those themes are now fully developed into a vast interconnected presentation split across a series of exhibitions, the opening of which focuses on cities, with the presentation unafraid to set forth with not only creative but political intent: the opening room is dedicated to the Grenfell disaster including a moving and urgent film by Kimia Zabihyan and Grenfell Next of Kin and photographs by Khadija Saye, the emerging artist who died in the fire.

In galleries flooded with light, with works well-placed to allow space for deep meanings to breathe yet also speak across the room to other projects, the politics is ever present. A film by Andrés Jaque’s Office for Political Innovation states ‘EVERYTHING SHINES AT HUDSONS YARDS’ in a video essay that connects reflective neoliberal architecture of New York to climate and human crises in Xholobeny, South Africa, where titanium for self-cleaning materials is sourced. A project initially made for and presented at Lesley Lokko’s 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture, it carries a wit, critique, and ethics present throughout the 'Inequalities' exhibitions.

One shouldn’t usually contrast and compare events like biennials and triennials, as each has its own modus operandi. However, with the Carlo Ratti-curated Venice Biennale of Architecture opening only a few days before Triennale’s offer, it is hard not to read between the two very different approaches. Ratti’s curation was cramped and in nervous darkness, here it is measured and in hopeful light, but more crucially there is more criticality, ethics, politics, awareness, and nuance in the first four rooms of the Triennale presentation than the whole of Ratti’s curation of the main Venice exhibition. In Venice, ideas for the future were mainly derived from universities, architects, and organisations of the wealthy Global North, in Milan, visitors are invited to learn from across the world, telling us that technology can only be one part of our path from collective crises.

The Cities exhibition is coherent and strong. It shows us a long table laid up for the fast-breaking Iftar meal in Gaza, surrounded by destroyed homes. Michael Maltzan Architecture’s video installation considers the LA fires and how they reveal deep-seated inequalities in the city, Studio Anna Heringer co-initiated Bangladeshi a women’s collective working against urban migration and keeping clothing industries in rural communities – their ornate textiles are palimpsests of maps, materials, and messages: ‘Your luxury, your lack of wisdom, your greed endangers our country.’

Like all such vast, sprawling biennials/triennials there are international ‘pavilions’. Here, there are common approaches such as China’s promotion of their creative design Universities and Saudi Arabia’s place-promotion through ecology, but there are strong moments where international thought speak directly to the overarching curatorial theme, especially from nations who aren’t often seen (or can afford to be) at biennials like Venice. This is especially the case at the culmination of the Cities section where pavilions for Lebanon, Cuba, the Republic of Armenia, and Angola directly pick up the theme of the main exhibition, as well as the genuine concern for politics and the wider world. In particular, the Puerto Rico presentation is timely and poignant: a sculpture dedicated to the memory of Neulisa ‘Alexa’ Luciano, a homeless, Black, trans-woman who was hunted and murdered. An assemblage drawing inspiration from three places connected to her life and murder is formed as a distant memorial where none exists in the spaces of her life.

The Palazzo dell’Arte is a vast building, though over recent years and under the presidency of architect Stefano Boeri, the building has, piece by piece, become renovated, re-ordered, and returned to a clarity of place and architecture that helps visitor navigation and the work of curators. Upstairs, further exhibitions explore Inequality: the ongoing research project of Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, in a show intelligently designed by GRACE architects, explores bacteria; Telmo PIevani explores Inequality through biodiversity; and a wonderful, colourful, humour-filled installation considers human longevity.

The grand, diverging staircase that connects the levels has been offered up to a full-height installation of red ribbons hanging from the ceiling. Their length corresponds to the number of deaths each day since Hamas’ invasion of Israel on 7 October, 2023. On the steps, under each ribbon, a small plaque breaks the death count down between the 1,600 Israeli deaths and 46,900 Palestinian deaths. It’s a tragic reminder, but for Triennale to centre this so monumentally, and poetically, and through factual information not emotion, is welcome when one considers how other nations and institutions – including Venice Biennale – contend with active political issues.

The Bacteria presentation in particular realises that to go forwards, society needs to understand both the past and all people’s histories, not only the Global North. A rich archive explores the history of disease and germs inside the body, architecture, and city – through history before showing us possible futures across design, architecture, and technology. It is optimistic but not in a technophile techtopian future. Carlo Ratti hammers home his message in Venice, here there is space for nuance, conversation, awareness, and ethics: from the tiny (microbes to clean pollution from Milan Cathedral and funghi-enriched biofertilizer to fight soil nutrient deficiency) to the massive (a bacterial machine to break down sewer fatbergs to a plan to import organic soil from Perugia to Milan’s playgrounds today so kids can develop microbiomes capable of responding to future infections when adults, when Milan’s climate will as Puglia’s today).

There is more throughout the grand spaces of the Palazzo dell’Arte, too much to fit in this review and too much to fit in a day: more pavilions; a look at the future of inequality in Milan; some slightly-clunky data-heavy presentations; an over-sized presentation of the work of the Norman Foster Foundation that while often very good, comes across a little like a trade fair promotion in which Norman Foster can singularly solve all the world’s crises; and a wonderful set piece by Theaster Gates, wrapping the room that is a permanent display of Ettore Sottsass’s Casa Lana with the artist’s vast Koide Collection of Japanese ceramics, part of his ongoing process to save an artisanal legacy and reminder that even the value of archives are dependent upon inequalities of power, fashion, and geography.

Triennale Milano’s International Exhibition on Equalities contains a lot, but it rarely feels heavy, despite the depth and urgency of the issues under consideration. The curation, wit, and optimism throughout is never as didactic and singular as Carlo Ratti’s Venice Biennale offer, and because of that is a space for genuine interdisciplinary, international, inter-species consideration, all modes we will need to navigate the years ahead, and to make them more equitable.

Wallpaper* has once again taken up residence in the sweeping Curva space on the first floor of the Triennale di Milano for Milan Design Week 2025, with a showcase of global emerging talents from the world of design. Material Alchemists is both the title of the exhibition and the collective noun for Wallpaper’s Class of 2025: each designer or studio demonstrates a proclivity for material exploration and expression in their practice.

Our exhibitors are a truly global collective. Hailing from Antwerp and Adelaide to Vancouver and Vietnam, their creative identities, born through upbringing, education and professional practice, all feed into their lenses on life. A cultural narrative underpins much of their work, but it is the matter of material that we have zeroed in on. Working with everything from paper and plastic to rope and raffia, there is an inherent curiosity in our exhibitors about how matter can be coaxed, manipulated and transformed. We witness an interplay between expression, process and function, with exhibits spanning a spectrum from craft and artworks to high-performing quotidian objects. As such, Material Alchemists reflects our current behaviour in design. It is no longer an industry, but rather a broad term that encompasses every stage of the creation process.

Our partner for Material Alchemists is StoneX, a family company and global purveyor and patron of the world’s rarest natural stone. StoneX has built close relationships with the world’s finest quarry families, bringing to light their unique provenance and proud traditions. In partnership with geologists, it reveals the metamorphic stories of different stone varieties to build appreciation beyond the material’s surface value, guiding us to understand what makes a particular stone attractive, as well as helping us build an emotional connection with it. Through pioneering and careful refinement, StoneX ensures each stone’s natural properties are preserved and expressed. In the company’s own words, it is ‘committed to elevating the true value of stone through collaboration with pioneering artists, exploring the lexicon of this one-of-a-kind material’.

Our exhibition has been designed by our longstanding collaborators at DWA Design Studio, with plinths using Polygood® panels from The Good Plastic Company, a leading manufacturer of surface materials made from fully recycled and recyclable plastic. All the materials used in the exhibition design will be repurposed.

Exhibitors:

Abid Javed / Agnes Studio / Ajay Shah / Alfred Lowe / Astraeus Clarke / Dina Nur Satti / Federico Stefanovich / Jiri Krejcirik / Kodai Iwamoto / Lennart Engels / Liam Fleming / Marc Sweeney / Michelle Jiaxin Huang / Miranda Keyes / Morii Design / Olorunfemi Adewuyi / Pauline Leprince / Sheyang Li / Steffany Tran / Yoon Shun

'Material Alchemists' is at the Curva space in the Triennale di Milano from April 7th - 13th and is open to the public.

Eleven years after the brand's first shop opened in Milan, in 1978, Fiorucci arrived in Los Angeles and some 3,000 people turned up to celebrate. Navigating the launch party crowds, Andy Warhol wrote at the time, was ‘just like going to Studio 54 on a big night out’. The artist was already part of Elio Fiorucci’s social circle (Fiorucci's New York branch on East 59th Street had become synonymous with club culture two years earlier), and a photograph of the pair on Rodeo Drive accompanies the diary entry at Triennale Milano, where a comprehensive new retrospective of the fashion brand's Italian founder has just opened.

‘I guess the objective was to disentangle the man from the brand,’ says the show’s curator, Judith Clark. ‘We’re in Milan, most people here knew him, knew of him, or their parents knew him, so it's like dealing with a national treasure.’ Described by Marco Sammicheli, Triennale’s curator of Design, Fashion and Crafts, as like ‘a biopic’, ‘Elio Fiorucci’ opens then with a reel-to-reel machine, immediately followed by a riff on the designer’s schoolboy habit of staring out the window: a single child’s desk, stationed before a portal into his future, or the rest of the show. With Fiorucci having maintained during his career that he was a merchant rather than a fashion figure, nearby we learn about his earliest job at Emporio de Pantofole Fiorucci, his father’s slipper shop.

Elio Fiorucci at Triennale Milano

Colour, both literal and figurative, fills the space thereafter, with large-scale photographs and illustrations covering walls and several neon signs overhead. Designed by Fabio Cherstich, the layout’s vivid features echo the attitude and urgency inherent in the brand’s aesthetic and broader DNA. ‘Because Fabio's a sonographer and theatre director, our conversations went along the lines of, “Then who do we meet?”. So it was literally like rehearsing,’ notes Clark, relaying the beats of their collaboration. ‘And we kept the exhibition brief and object list open until the last night, which obviously tests everybody's courage, but felt appropriate – things just kept on coming in.’

Central to this exhaustive survey is Fiorucci’s distinctive branding, and a series of carrier bags, stickers, tins, posters and clothing labels foreground the practice. Elsewhere, photographs from shops, parties and research trips are abundant, and though apparel and shoes feature too, they operate more like cameos. Anecdotes from friends and employees (not mutually exclusive), highlight the significance of the people with whom Fiorucci surrounded himself, to which Eve Babitz pays tribute in a passage from Fiorucci: The Book (1980). ‘The essential genius of Fiorucci,’ she writes, ‘begins with the genius for choosing the right people, offbeat people with the ability to look at an obviously popular idea or thing, send it through outer space and bring it back light years ahead of where it started. That supersonic swerve in interpretation that makes something the rage, not merely popular.’

Clark concurs. ‘When he wanted to understand something, he commissioned people to do it,’ she tells Wallpaper*. ‘For example, they had an in-house research department – that's amazing to have in a design house – led by a philosopher, Giannino Malossi. So one of the voices of Italian fashion theory basically [had its beginnings] in this research department, creating exhibitions and publications, really amazing projects that are still prescient. Those are his books on the table.’

While Fiorucci’s adventures in New York and London shaped the vision for his first stores (on Carnaby Street and the King’s Road, much homage was paid to Biba and Vivienne Westwood, in particular), his hometown and relationship to it was a core part of the brand’s genesis, explains Clark. ‘Milan as a city is key, because he's creating spaces within a city that he describes as drab,’ she says. ‘There's a backdrop of political unrest; the city is not living a heyday, so it’s something he works with and against, creating brighter realities. He's always going towards a kind of brighter future. And he loves Victorian kitsch; all of these things that are about elsewhere, come in and sort of feed into the idiom.’

This curiosity is most keenly felt in a recreation of the designer’s office, a bright and busy scene decorated with imagery to the point of camouflage: walls are masked by postcards, paintings and photographs, magazines and toys take over the desk, and a rail of patterned garments further infiltrates. Leaning into the wider show’s florid sensibility, that it spills with ephemera speaks to the curator’s understanding of the Fiorucci phenomenon. ‘Some objects we don't have the information around,’ shares Clark, recalling how she and Cherstich sought to communicate the archive. ‘But we were really on the side of having this open forum: sometimes there’s an anecdote, a caption, and sometimes an object has to do the work. Fiorucci didn't like school, so it'd be terrible to tell people what to think.’

‘Elio Fiorucci’ runs at Triennale Milano until 16 March 2025.

Biennials and triennials often claim to be interdisciplinary, to have art at their core but through it explore wider social, political, ecological or scientific issues. It is often skin deep, but at the Triennale Milano it’s always been rooted in the purpose of the institution, a design museum at its core, but taking the notion of design widely across all disciplines, beyond objects, machines and chairs – though Triennale Milano's vast archive holds incredible examples of all these.

Every three years the institution hosts an International Exhibition, taking over the whole building with a genuine interdisciplinary approach to tackle a timely subject. The upcoming theme for 2025 is Inequalities, which Triennale President, architect Stefano Boeri, states is a subject critical to every single crisis and challenge humanity faces right now.

‘Inequalities’ symposium at the Triennale Milano

Boeri was introducing a day-long forum to introduce some of the ideas that will weave throughout next year’s International Exhibition – and with thirty speakers across two thematic sessions, there is much for exhibition coordinator Laura Maeran to weave. Topics covered culture, religion, health, biodiversity, bacteria, space, housing, migration, AI and much more. Across these, the scales at which inequality will be tackled varies, Boeri said, “from a geopolitical standpoint to bio-politics, investigating behaviours at different scales, from microscopic bacteria to planetary.”

Sometimes, however, these scales intermix. 'The building is an expansion of your gut' said Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina in their co-presentation, Forms follow bacteria which drew connections from microbiology to urban planning and architecture. It wasn’t bacteria, however, but a virus that most exacerbated inequalities over recent years. Covid impacted the poorest most, while governmental responses favoured the wealthier countries of the global north with a post-colonial and economic disparity which entered numerous presentations.

For Carlo Ratti, scholar and curator of next year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture, the pandemic offered opportunity to investigate community connections with data mapping, towards helping “mend invisible fault lines.” Ratti’s research suggests that when access to shared physical space is limited or removed, as Covid forced, people lose casual acquaintances and loose connections, important elements of community and collective relationships which help diversity and remove segregation.

This oblique perspective into inequality through broad subjects continued: Seble Woldeghiorghis discussed Black History Months in Italian cities, working with second generation communities; Sandro Balducci, a professor at DAStU Politecnico di Milano, discussed how the host city was embedded with inequality, calling for social needs to be prioritised in new developments; Guido Alfani of the Università Bocconi evidenced how the world’s richest 1% have not been impacted by governmental fiscal policies following the 2007 crash as had been the case after 1929 and World War II.

Social anthropologist Tim Ingold kicked off the afternoon session with a plea for a “new humanism”. In an impassioned call to reconsider our place in ecological systems – “humans are not above everything else, but in the middle of everything else” – Ingold hoped for a democracy that might support the fundamental qualities of “togetherness and difference”, themes also picked up by Theaster Gates in presenting three of his artworks celebrating and focusing on unseen communities.

Burkinabé architect Francis Kéré, a prominent contributor to the previous International Exhibition spoke of his project building a primary school in his home village of Gando, and how through it he creates access and opportunity. Another cultural participant, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, asked “Can we again start to understand and listen through collective story telling?” as he presented the Serpentine Gallery’s Radio Ballads project shares stories and songs across communities.

As with the previous International Exhibition, this forum feeds into the curation and framing of the 2025 exhibitions, even though the programme was comprised primarily not of cultural practitioners, but experts from a variety of fields. These experts were not always from academia or institutions, but often from self-made communities or histories that were not chosen. Nazanin Aghlani and Kimia Zabihyan both spoke meaningfully about the tragedy of Grenfell Tower. Aghlani is an architect and her mother died in the fire, while Zabihyan is a filmmaker who has become an advocate for the Grenfell Next of Kin organisation.

In Milan, shortly after the British Government published their seven-year inquiry spreading blame widely but ignoring issues of structural racism and ableism with regards to housing, Aghlani and Zabihyan were direct: “Everything that has happened has been a result of people demanding it, people from the most marginalised places.” They were also charged to keep fighting outside of their immediate community, with the group having travelled to Valencia and Milan to support communities affected by similar cladding-related fires.

If the Triennale Milano can keep the political charge and dedication to connecting beyond the local, as evidenced especially by Aghlani and Zabihyan but also by all speakers across all disciplines, then the exhibition will not only be rich in content, but also in power. It is no easy task to use the format of an exhibition to meaningfully explore social, political, ecological and scientific issues, but if any institution can carry off such a feat it is here, where Interdisciplinarity is rooted in its history and purpose – and I am looking forward to seeing how Boeri, Maeran and their team will pull all these issues together into a coherent, and important, analysis.

Throughout her career, few cast a longer shadow on the landscape of Italian design than Gae Aulenti. An architect, designer and creative polymath, she was born in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia in 1927, where her father worked as a tax collector and her mother as a school teacher. In 1953, she graduated from Milan’s Politecnico University, beginning a career spanning six fruitful decades. Aulenti is perhaps best known for her innate ability to beautifully integrate art, design and architecture. She could shift easily from large-scale public projects to intimate domestic spheres, and then toggle between styles without effort.

Her furniture, for instance, went from referencing Art Nouveau decorative details – as in the swooping shape of her bentwood ‘Sgarsul’ rocking chair from 1962 – to incorporating industrial and found materials, such as in her 1993 ‘Tour’ table made of tempered glass and four working bicycle wheels. However, the fil rouge that binds all her work is a clear-headed view towards the future – a fact that is now being celebrated in a wide-ranging exhibition, ‘Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)’, at Milan’s Triennale Design Museum, which runs until 16 October 2024.

‘Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)’, at Milan’s Triennale Design Museum

The wide-ranging exhibition takes a two-pronged approach to documenting Aulenti’s work. The first consists of a series of 1:1 scale reproductions of several of her most influential interior and architectural projects. Visitors enter into the exhibition by passing through a recreation of her ‘Arrival at the Seaside’ installation for the 13th Triennale exhibition in 1964, a series of sketches of robed women blown up to life size and set against a reflective background beneath an undulating textile ceiling.

Moving deeper into the gallery, visitors are then deposited into the Olivetti showroom in Buenos Aires, which Aulenti designed in 1968. Here, a set of risers act as a display for Olivetti’s products, many of which were designed by Aulenti, including her ‘King Sun’ lamp, made for Kartell in 1967, as well as typewriters by the likes of Ettore Sottsass and Marcello Nizzoli.

A medley of interiors from the 1970s and 1980s sits in the centre of the gallery. There is the Fiat showroom on Zurich’s Beethovenstrasse, designed in 1973, where Aulenti propped up a pair of then-brand-new Fiat Rallys on a sloping floor reminiscent of a race track. The scene then shifts into a recreation of the Brion family’s home in San Michele di Pagana.

The white, low-lit living room, complete with Aulenti’s bent aluminium ‘Stringa’ sofa from Poltranova and a marble ‘Jumbo’ table designed for Knoll, is arranged like a museum, where sculptures, plants, candles and a selection of her lamps – the 1968 ‘Oracolo’ for Artemide, and the ‘Pipstrello’ from 1965 and the ‘Ruspa’ from 1971, both for Martinelli Luce – have been placed atop a set of carpeted steps. Also included are sections of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris from 1986, her design for an underground station in Naples, sets for the production of Elektra by Richard Strauss at La Scala and, as visitors exit the gallery, a slice of the San Francesco d’Assisi airport in Umbria, which Aulenti designed in 2012.

The exhibition also includes a chronological account of Aulenti’s life and major projects. Organised around the perimeter of the space are photographs, drawings, letters, models and other ephemera from her meticulously preserved archive: from plans for her first-ever house design in San Siro, Milan to an hour-by-hour itinerary for a trip to India. But perhaps the most moving element of the exhibition is its location.

Throughout her career, Aulenti returned again and again to Palazzo dell’Arte, where the Triennale Design Museum is located: from staging her ‘Arrival at the Seaside’ installation in 1964, to restructuring of the museum’s galleries in 1990, and later receiving the Medaglia d’Oro award for lifetime achievement in design, shortly before her death in 2012. Now, this new exhibition cements her lasting role as a titan of Italian design.

‘Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)’ is on display at Triennale Milano until 12 January 2025 triennale.org

Walking through Inga Sempé's perfect imperfect house, which has been reconstructed at the Triennale Museum in Milan, feels like an investigative exploration, a treasure hunt, and an embarrassing invasion of privacy - all at once. Until September 15, 2024, the Milanese museum presents the exhibition ‘Inga Sempé. La casa imperfetta’, curated by Marco Sammicheli. ‘The exhibition concept arose from a desire to continue experimenting with visitor-interactive exhibition formats,’ he says. ‘After the gym of tools for the office and home designed with Riccardo Blumer for Alberto Meda's solo show, with Sempé we wanted to investigate the domestic landscape in its rawest honesty.’

‘Inga Sempé. La casa imperfetta’ at Triennale Milano

The exhibition showcases projects, objects, and designs in a domestic setting that resembles a film set, in an itinerary designed by Studio A/C, run by Alessia Pessano and Chiara Novello. ‘I'm tired of seeing the desire for perfection all around us,’ says Sempé. ‘Purity, for example, has no effect on me. I do not want to meet perfect people or things. In magazines, perfection is depicted as a goal to strive for, with giant, empty houses and no daily imperfections; the same is true for women, who have perfect skin, excellent dishes, and perfect children. A gigantic bore. A generic lie.’

The result is far from monotonous flawlessness. A sports medal hangs on the studio's bookcase. There is a bell on a shelf, similar to those found in hotel reception areas. Next to it, a deck of Neapolitan cards, a map, and a ticket for admission to a municipal swimming pool in Paris. A chess set can be found in the bedroom, next to Vico Magistretti's Eclisse lamp. Grison shoe cream and a shoe cleaning brush are stored in a basket next to the bed. On the kitchen table, some candles are bent on themselves, and a white pot holder hangs alone among plastic baskets, and glass splashback. An out-of-date analogue green telephone sits next to an espresso cup in the living room. 

‘I just wanted to create a house that wasn't perfect, far from the museum setting where every object becomes a pseudo masterpiece because it's placed on a pedestal,’ explains Sempé. ‘I wanted to include all of the things that we all have at home, such as twisted and dried sponges, soap aged like an old cheese, and administrative documents.’ 

The Casa Imperfetta is also designed to show visitors the complexities of Sempé's work, allowing them to explore products designed by the French designer, and her idea of restoring the tradition of anonymous objects. ‘Inga's aesthetics are based on the charm of the obsolete, the simplicity of the function, and the clarity of the method of use. All seasoned with a deft use of colours and various materials,’ says Sammicheli. 

Sempè is a connoisseur of materials and industrial processes: ‘Her catalogue is extensive, so it was not difficult to furnish an entire house. With the exception of sanitary ware and telephones, Inga has created designs for a wide range of products,’ he underlines. ‘The references, smudges, stratifications, accumulations, and combinations occur spontaneously, just as they do at home.’

Visitors are allowed to interact with environments such as the bedroom, kitchen, corridor, vestibule, and outdoor space. Anyone can sit in front of the desk or open a box on the shelf to reveal what's hidden inside: ‘A variety of prohibited actions may be carried out in the museum space,’ confirms Sammicheli. ‘Accentuating them is a cultural challenge and a bet we want to take. Touching, turning on, lying down, testing, and browsing become simple yet novel ways to learn about the functions, textures, and mechanisms that underpin a design object.’

'Inga Sempé. La casa imperfetta' is on view until 15 September 2024

Triennale Milano
Viale Alemagna, 6
Milan

Marking Wallpaper's return to Milan Design Week, the Class of '24 exhibition (on view until 21 April 2024) is a showcase of works by emerging talent in furniture and product design. Running alongside Salone del Mobile 2024, the display is staged across the Triennale's first-floor curve, with a set designed by long-term Wallpaper* Collaborator DWA Design Studio. 

Wallpaper* Class of ’24 at Triennale Milano

Wallpaper* has always been committed to supporting and promoting emerging designers, across the magazine's pages and through several projects and commissions. With Class of ’24, we offer a stage to emerging designers from all over the globe, presenting their work to the global design community and connecting with the network of makers and brands coming together in Milan. 

Celebrating the bright future of design and its players, the Wallpaper* Class of ‘24 offers a platform where a diverse range of backgrounds and disciplines can debut on a global stage, building on Wallpaper’s role as a champion of innovation and emerging talent.

The designers include Alexis and Ginger, Andu Masebo, Christian + Jade, DDNG Studio, Ibiyane, Josh Ike Egesi, Lauren Goodman, Lily Clark, Matan Fadida, MMR Studio, Olivia Bossy, Panorammma, Raphael Kadid, Rino Claessens, Rio Kobayashi, and Seongil Choi, showing existing pieces from their recent output. 

Additionally, the exhibition debuts two specially-commissioned works created by Parti and Giles Tettey Nartey with the support of AHEC, made in American hard maple by Jan Hendzel.

'We take immense joy in collaborating with creatives due to the unique opportunities it offers us as an organisation representing both an industry and a precious natural resource,' says David Venables, AHEC's European Director. 'Over the past two decades, we've cultivated fruitful collaborations with architects and designers to showcase the diverse possibilities of the sustainable timbers we represent.'

Meanwhile, Wallpaper* also partners with grown diamond specialist SNOW, a company dedicated to 'redefine the creative horizons of carbon and leave an enduring positive impact on the world.' Acting as a laboratory of ideas to involve creative talent into cutting-edge jewellery design and making, SNOW teams with Wallpaper* on a future commission of a talent from the Class of '24 roster, and a film exploring the alchemy of the diamond growing process. 

Wallpaper* Class of ’24 is on view until 21 April as part of Milan Design Week 2024

Triennale Milano
Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6
20121 Milano

americanhardwood.org
janhendzel.com
snowdiamonds.com

The Wallpaper* Class of ’24 will see our return to Milan Design Week with a new exhibition showcasing work by emerging talent in furniture and product design. Running alongside Salone del Mobile 2024 (16 – 21 April), our exhibition will be staged across the Triennale's first-floor curve, celebrating the bright future of design and its players. 

Wallpaper* Class of ’24 at Triennale

'Wallpaper* Class of ’24 is a project that fosters our ongoing commitment to emerging designers, creating a platform where a diverse range of backgrounds and disciplines can debut on a global stage,' says Sarah Douglas, Wallpaper* Editor-in-Chief. 'Building on Wallpaper's role as a champion of innovation and emerging talent, we have curated a showcase of new designers that most excite us right now, to connect them with a network of makers and brands.'

Among the exhibition's cohort is Austrian-Japanese Rio Kobayashi, who draws from his mixed heritage and training to create imaginative furniture designs, as well as Canadian Lauren Goodman, whose work is based on transforming salvaged materials into inspired furniture designs, and Korea's Seongil Choi, whose experimental approach is based on material, form and colour. 

Martinique-based Ibyane (formed of Tania Doumbe Fines and Élodie Dérond) is a design studio whose projects are about 'being in conversation and exchanging ideas, views on the world, on beauty and on design', while Andu Masebo's experimental furniture designs are informed by repurposed found materials (including an entire red Alfa Romeo). 

Working with American Hardwood

Sharing our values of supporting emerging talent is AHEC (American Hardwood Export Council), which was most recently our partner for Discovered, a 2021 exhibition at London's Design Museum featuring works in wood by designers who were inspired by pandemic isolation. 

For Class of ’24, AHEC worked with Wallpaper* to select two designers from the exhibition's roster, working with them to create new work produced by London-based furniture maker Jan Hendzel. AHEC collaborated with designer Giles Tettey Nartey and Eleanor Hill of architecture studio Parti, who experimented with the possibilities of American maple. 

Inspired by his Ghanaian heritage, Nartey presents 'Communion', taking this commission as an opportunity to explore culture, culinary tradition, and the rituals of domestic life in Ghana. His large-scale sculptural piece is a table conceived for the making of fufu – a West African food made by pounding cassava into a dough, a mundane act that becomes a communal performance where everyone comes together in the shared experience of making food.

Parti, meanwhile, created the 'Pirouette' collection, a furniture range that captures a sense of movement to convey the joyful feeling of spinning around. The design is based on a simplified motif referencing draped fabric. 'Hand sculpting fabric out of heavy materials is something we’ve seen throughout history’, says Hill. ‘Howevever, at Parti we are very interested in utilising new technologies and processes, and pushing them to the limit to create feasibly manufactured products. As a result, the making process is integral to the design, informing its boundaries’

'We take immense joy in collaborating with creatives due to the unique opportunities it offers us as an organisation representing both an industry and a precious natural resource,' says David Venables, AHEC's European Director. 'Over the past two decades, we've cultivated fruitful collaborations with architects and designers to showcase the diverse possibilities of the sustainable timbers we represent.'

Wallpaper* Class of ’24 is on view during Salone del Mobile, from 16-21 April 2024

Triennale Milano
Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6
20121 Milano

americanhardwood.org

Triennale unveils Cuore, the new heart of the Milanese institution that will serve as a centre for research, study, and archives. A space to explore the future while preserving the institution's memory, it brings back to life the Triennale Research Centre archives had been closed since 1990, having been set up in 1935 as a research centre as well as a space to hold the museum's heritage through the cataloguing of its libraries and collections. 

The design of the new space was entrusted to architect Luca Cipelletti's Studio AR.CH.IT, who created a functional and modular design for the archives in collaboration with Unifor. 

Triennale archives: Cuore opens to the public

The 400 square metres space is located on the museum's ground floor, and it is conceived as a flexible space in constant evolution that will grow alongside Triennale's own scientific endeavours. Welcoming the public and visitors of the Milanese institution, the space is also open to the scientific community universities, foundations and companies public and private. 

'In 2023 we celebrated 100 years of the Triennale, and this new space was established as a resource that looks both to the past and to the future,' says Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano. 'We felt the need to create a venue where the extraordinary research, study and in-depth work that underpins Triennale’s cultural proposal, and brings the institution’s heritage to life, is visible and accessible to all. Cuore is a place open to everyone, where it is possible to consult materials from our archives, but also to do research and develop ideas for the future thanks to the Triennale Research Center, which is being reborn right here.'

The space was devised to fulfil three main functions. First, to reinstate the Triennale Research Centre, with a future vision to develop new innovative projects that expand on the institution's expertise. A second function for Cuore is to honour the heritage of Triennale through a catalogue of its vast archives, libraries and collections that encompass design, art, architecture, graphic design, photography, drawings as well as letters and books. 

Finally, with Cuore, Triennale aims at strengthening its role as a platform for the promotion of design culture, in collaboration with the institution's network of organisations. 

Design by Luca Cipelletti and Unifor

Cipelletti's design for the space opens up the view from the main atrium to the iconic spiral staircase by Giovanni Muzio, celebrating the building and its history and creating a dialogue between the architecture and the archive displays. 

The exhibition design is based on a flexible, modular project, created with Unifor by Cipelletti and consisting on a system of display cases, cabinets and shelves, covering a 300 square metre surface and designed to display different objects and materials. The design allows for a variety of formats, including showcasing digital, photographic and audio-visual archive materials. For graphics, Unifor created 12 vertical drawers that pull out to display different assets, while 4 metre tall glass displays are dedicated to specific objects in the collection. 

'With Cuore we have sought to develop a platform for research, services, experimentation and cultural production that works in synergy with leading Italian and foreign institutions in the academic, scientific and cultural fields, as well as with emerging and innovative organisations,' adds Carla Morogallo, Director General of Triennale Milano. 'We want to actively involve a network of partners in order to bring to life and activate a heritage of knowledge and reflection on the future.'

triennale.org

Juergen Teller is known for seeing the beauty in the mundane. The renowned German photographer strips back the shiny lacquer of perfection to reveal authenticity – often by injecting humour into his candid celebrity portraits and fashion editorials. His latest exhibition, ‘i need to live’, is now on display at Triennale Milano (until 1 April 2024), after its inaugural showing in Paris’ Grand Palais Ephémère.

Juergen Teller ‘i need to live’ at Triennale Milano

Saint Laurent united with Juergen Teller as the sponsor of this career-spanning exhibition that presents more than 1,000 works. Expect to discover imagery that is both personal and commissioned, giving visitors a chance to dive into events that have shaped Teller’s life.

The exhibition is curated by Thomas Weski in collaboration with Teller and his wife and creative partner Dovile Drizyte. Teller’s uniquely twisted perspective has shaped the showcase, which celebrates the beauty and fragility of life.

‘i need to live’ explores Teller’s artistic evolution from the early 1990s, spanning photography, videos and installations, and includes a photographic series created for the exhibition. Discover personal imagery of Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, Björk and her son in Iceland, and self-portraits of Teller from childhood to the present day.

Also featured is a series in which Teller and Drizyte explore their relationship, marriage and parenting, ‘defined by a characteristic mix of serious and intimate but often humorous characters created in a grotesque style’, says Stefano Boeri, president of Triennale Milano.

'i need to live' is at Triennale Milano until 1 April 2024

triennale.org

Triennale posters are the subject of a new book, published by Marsilio Arte and titled Triennale. Cento anni di manifesti. Triennale held a triennial design exhibition from 1923, becoming a key cultural hub for the city of Milan and offering a diverse and thought-provoking series of design encounters. 

Over the course of the century, the visual identity of Triennale developed and set the tone for trends in visual communication and graphic design, also thanks to collaboration with the leading designers of their time. The book gathers works by Ettore Sottsass, Wim Crouwel, Massimo Vignelli, Anna Kulachek, Italo Lupi and many more, charting the history of the institution's approach to visual culture.

Curated by Mario Piazza, the book opens with an introduction by Triennale president, architect Stefano Boeri, and was designed by Swiss studio Norm. 'Triennale has always anticipated trends,' writes Boeri. 'It is (and has been) a place open to exchanges of ideas, a meeting points of different opinions and visions. Today, we aim at being a school to ponder on the big questions of contemporaneity.'

Boeri's vision for the institution has always been respectful of its stories and illustrious past, while ensuring it keeps asking the relevant questions for the future, through a varied programme that encourages exchanges and discovery. 

The book includes the posters from the triennial exhibitions as well as those for temporary design exhibitions held at the museum over the years, helping put together the pieces of its history. Each poster comes with a detailed analysis of its design, as well as extended materials that look at the context of the specific exhibition and moment in design history. 'Looking at our archives,' adds Boeri, 'allows us to explore the future of design while paying constant attention to our past.'

'Triennale. Cento anni di manifesti', published by Marsilio Arte

Available from Amazon

Triennale Milano has announced the theme for the 24th International Exhibition of Triennale Milano, set to launch on 17 May 2025. 'Inequalities. How to mend the fractures of humanity' is the title chosen for the upcoming edition of the exhibition, announced during the 173rd General Assembly of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in Paris.

The event marked BIE's official recognition that confirms the status of the 24th Triennale, giving the Milanese institution the opportunity to invite international participants to the exhibition via official diplomatic channels. 

‘Inequalities. How to mend the fractures of humanity’ at Triennale Milano

The theme of inequality is a key concern on the international stage, and the exhibition will explore it through social, cultural, geographic and generational aspects. It will also address how the ecological transition should be carried out without impacting the world's poorest countries, making Milan a centre of crucial debates on the theme. 

'We have now understood how the two main issues that humanity will have to face in the coming years are closely interrelated: a green transition necessary for the survival of our species on planet Earth as well as a strong campaign to reduce those growing inequalities regarding income, gender, geographical origin and social background, which in recent decades have created huge fractures in the societies of human individuals,' said Triennale President, Stefano Boeri at the assembly. 

The 24th Triennale follows the exhibition curated by Francis Kéré and Ersilia Vaudo titled 'Unknown Unknowns: An Introduction to Mysteries’, which closed in early 2023. Once again, the Milanese institution will explore a theme through a variety of media, including art, design, film, and research, in collaboration with international thinkers and creatives. 

'The challenge of the future will be in the cities of the world,' continues Boeri. 'Only more fair and equitable cities, capable of reducing inequalities in income and access to culture, services and information, will be able to start a truly effective and inclusive ecological transition.'

'Inequalities. How to mend the fractures of humanity' at the 24th International Exhibition of Triennale Milano opens on 17 May 2025

triennale.org

A new Triennale Milano exhibition, 'Italian Painting Today', is, as the name suggests, very much of its moment. The vibrant display of contemporary Italian art features only recent works by several generations of artists. Curated by Damiano Gullì and designed by Studio Italo Rota, the exhibition spotlights 120 artists, born between 1960 and 2000, each of whom has contributed a single artwork, created between 2020 and 2023.

Named after the 1975 volume by Multhipla/Giancarlo Politi, ‘Italian Painting Today’ provides a cross-generational perspective and allows a deep dive into the idea of what contemporary art is. It results in a broad variety of artworks covering a short time frame that has experienced conflict, a pandemic, and social transformations.

The extensive itinerary displays the works of artists including Stefano Arienti, Francesca Banchelli, Lorenza Boisi, Pierpaolo Campanini, Guglielmo Castelli, Adelaide Cioni, Chiara Enzo, Paolo Gonzato, Giulia Mangoni, Beatrice Marchi, Margherita Manzelli, Pietro Moretti, Maria Morganti, Francis Offman, Jem Perucchini, Alessandro Pessoli, Aronne Pleuteri, Nazzarena Poli Maramotti, Pietro Roccasalva and Alice Visentin.

Taking place during the Triennale Milano’s centenary celebrations, the exhibition draws on the museum’s history of analysis and display of painting. The Triennale’s president Stefano Boeri stated: ‘After the renewed Museum of Italian Design and the ‘Home Sweet Home’ exhibition, we are presenting a third exhibition project conceived for the Triennale’s centenary: a major exhibition on the state of contemporary Italian painting.’

The show offers an immersion in all the idiosyncrasies of Italian painting, its richness and complexity, the thorough diversity of techniques, and the experimentation with tradition.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, including conversations with artists, critics and historians. A podcast produced by Triennale Milano and Tiziano Scarpa, completes the experience.

Curator Gullì affirms: ‘“Italian Painting Today” is the result of years of research, study visits, and encounters – both personal and professional– with artists throughout Italy. The scene that has emerged is a remarkably lively one. By connecting with its own history, Triennale has taken up the challenge of presenting painting today in all its complexity, offering an opportunity to analyse the scene, promoting and enhancing it both within our country and around the world.’

‘Italian Painting Today’ is on display at Triennale Milano until 11 February 2024
triennale.org

Triennale Milano presents 'Alberto Meda. Tensione e leggerezza’ (Alberto Meda. Tension and lightness), an exhibition on view until 24 March 2024 dedicated to the Italian engineer and designer whose career spans more than 50 years. 

It’s a carefully chosen title: 'Tension has to do with forces; whenever you deal with a structural aspect, you must deal with these forces. It entails understanding how to observe the structure of objects,' Alberto Meda explains. 'At the same time, lightness is essential to me. Not only did I achieve physical lightness, but also visual lightness, thanks to experimental research on composite materials.'

‘Alberto Meda. Tension and lightness’ at Triennale

The exhibition, curated by Marco Sammicheli, director of the Triennale Milano Museum of Italian Design, and staged by Riccardo Blumer, has an experimental format and is divided into three parts: 'We begin with the very serious game of determining what solutions underlie the projects, as well as the intuitions that generated them,' Sammicheli says. 'Then we look at how Alberto Meda approached light, water management, and a specific concept of comfort. Finally, there is a third space outside the exhibition's boundaries: the installation in the monumental hall featuring Foscarini's Chiaroscura and a metallic steel fresco created specifically for the Triennale.' 

The gaps between the marble walls of the museum's grand staircase have been transformed into an installation called 'Luce Scalare', nodding to to Foscarini's lamp. On the mezzanine, the designer's work is summarised by 'Profili di Luce': stainless steel panels backlit by an LED panel, on which the silhouette of the objects that have defined Meda's career has been traced using a laser.

The first section of the exhibition is dedicated to identifying a different use for the objects that the designer has created over the years: Meda subverts some technical aspects by applying another use, and transforming the objects into 'games' that the visitor can play with. 

While turning a coloured filter fan in front of the ‘Titania’ lamp frame, one can experiment with different colour effects. The sounds of the ‘Physix’ chair's structural 'bones' (each component is made with different percentages of fibreglass to help the seat endure mechanical stress) are expressed as a xylophone. 

'We thought that a xylophone was a good way to show the variation of the custom-made material, depending on the use,' says Meda. 'It is critical to convey this because it is an aspect that cannot be seen or perceived. Instead, we realise this complexity in a less didactic and more playful way through sound and experience.'

If that first part of the exhibition challenges the conventions of design exhibition, the second room addresses the fundamental chapters of Alberto Meda's work in a more traditional manner. Several Frame chairs stand out one above the other, suggesting stackability and sculptural presence. Next to it, an example of adaptability and comfort is the 'Meda Gate' seating system, designed for Vitra for waiting areas in large public spaces such as airports. 

Then there's a look at his lighting projects, from 'Jack' for Luceplan (displayed complete with original packaging from 1985) to 'Aledin' for Kartell, designed in 2016 with his son Francesco. Two tables follow, one dedicated to water (from the ‘Water’ jug to filter the tap water, designed for Arabia Finland, to the high-efficiency self-supporting electric radiator 'Origami' for Tubes Radiatori) and the other to composite materials – the perfect example is 'Light Light', the world's first chair made entirely of carbon fibre. 

Meda was among the first to consider how the combination of materials can provide objects with performances as well as durability and longevity: 'From radiators to taps, from jugs to the Solar Bottle, there is also a strong emphasis on sustainability, both in terms of reducing material waste and water management,' says Sammicheli.

'I would like to defeat a certain idea of today, according to which design is simply a flourish, a swirl, a free shape stuck to an object designed by others,' Meda says as he leads us up the museum staircase, showcasing his lighting projects. 'This is not the case, as I hope this exhibition will demonstrate.'

'Alberto Meda. Tensione e leggerezza' is on view until 24 March 2024

Triennale
Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6
20121 Milano 

triennale.org

Alberto Meda's work in pictures

‘Home Sweet Home’ is a new exhibition at Triennale Milano (until 10 September 2023) that marks the institution's centenary celebrations. How has the process of designing our house changed? Which developments have occurred over the last century? Nina Bassoli, curator for Architecture, Urban Regeneration, Cities at Triennale, tries to answer these questions, in collaboration with exhibition designers Captcha Architecture.

‘Home Sweet Home’ at Triennale Milano

Bassoli's exhibition explores the transformations in contemporary living proceeding on two parallel tracks: using the Triennale archives, but also adopting new points of view, narrative and languages, to redefine the contradictions between home and work, masculine and feminine, environmentalism and activism, public and private space. 

Triangular beds for families or polyamorous couples, multifunctional housing projects with massive social impacts, tables that reflect on sharing daily work and lunch – at home, the lines between reality and fiction, intimacy and exposure are becoming increasingly blurred. 'I think that the most unexpected result of my research definitely consisted in the discovery of how many points of view can come out from an exhibition that focuses predominantly on a theme like the home, that has seen many interpretations over the years,' says Bassoli.

The 15-chapter exhibition is divided into five thematic historic sections bringing together artefacts and materials from the Triennale Milano archives (1923 to 2023), and ten specific environments that function as exhibitions inside exhibitions. Among them, The Sex & the City research group's L'angelo del focolare (Angel of the Hearth) explores the contrasting roles of men and women in public and domestic spaces, while Gaia Piccarolo's Casa ludens (Leisure Home) is about the history of our leisure time, from camping equipment to the first TVs. 

Our relationship with nature in the domestic space is also on display, thanks to Annalisa Metta's La natura è di casa (Nature at Home), with a historic gallery that acts as a counterpoint to the Il parlamento delle piante d’appartamento (The House-Plant Parliament) by landscape architect Céline Baumann. Also, the Tre finestre (Three windows) by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio for ‘The domestic project’, shown at the Triennale in 1986 under the direction of Mario Bellini, has been restored and reconfigured in its magnificent original size. 

Among the site-specific environments are the MAIO collective's Urban K -Type community kitchens, which speak to us about marginalisation, involvement, and possible emancipation, while L'architettura della longhouse (The Architecture of the Longhouse), in the midst of the hallway, reveals the different types of premodern dwelling from Germany to Indonesia. 

'Objects and spaces can change the social relationships among human beings,' says Bassoli. 'The plants that inhabit our homes, apparently stuck there for our private joy, can create a cognitive dissonance between their decorative appearance and a brutal colonial history, like in the House-Plant Parliament installation by Céline Baumann. The exhibition also helps us to discover that a kitchen can become a public space, where the work is shared (Urban K-Type by MAIO) or that a bed can have different shapes and sizes, considering that no family can really be put in a box with a standard shape (A Section of Now by CCA, Canadian Center for Architecture).'

The exhibition is entered by looking in a mirror placed over a reproduction of the bathroom sink, a symbol of daily morning rituals, while the final installation, which doubles as a curtain, is an image from Trasformare, non demolire (Transformation, no Demolition), the celebrated renovation of the 530 flats in Bordeaux's Grand Parc grande ensemble by Pritzker Prize winners Lacaton & Vassal – a political and ecological project. 'Focusing on the home and on all that this wide concept refers to, the exhibition also reflects on the role that Triennale had over the years,' explains Bassoli. 'The institution has always been a place for birth of new ideas, where the concepts of “house” and “living” had a central role. There have been many experiments on reconstruction and on the modernisation of lifestyles, on housing for all, and I was interested in going back to reflect on this, on the proximity between the world of design and the life of each of us, the most intimate and everyday life, made of urgent needs and great dreams.'

‘Home Sweet Home’ is on view at Triennale Milano until 10 September 2023

Triennale
Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6
20121 Milano 

triennale.org

Home Sweet Home: from the Triennale archives

Irreverent and rebellious, Dutch design collective Droog held its first Milan presentation in 1993. Thirty years on, Milan’s Triennale and Rotterdam’s Het Nieuwe Instituut present ‘Droog30. Design or Non-design?’, assembled by independent curator and Wallpaper* Milan Editor Maria Cristina Didero and Richard Hutten, Droog founding member alongside fellow designers including Gijs Bakker and Renny Ramakers. The collective’s name is a Dutch word meaning ‘dry’, indicating a general preference for a minimalist and essential approach to design.

Droog at 30: a revolutionary take on design

‘Droog can be considered one of the last movements of the 20th century, it was the explosion of a shared common sensibility,’ comments Didero. ‘Their revolutionary idea lay in an approach towards the object that was more conceptual and less functional: even if the function was there, they started from a more artistic approach, compared to the typical one that characterised the designers of the time.’

The exhibition revisits some of Droog’s most memorable pieces, from Tejo Remy’s ‘Chest of Drawers’ (a series of individual drawers haphazardly fastened together with a belt), to Marcel Wanders’ ‘Knotted Chair’ and Hutton’s cross-shaped table. 

Held at Triennale during Milan Design Week, the exhibition will also feature notes and comments from the global design community, gathered by Didero and Hutten via Twitter account @Droog30, to demonstrate the collective’s impact through the memories and points of view of those who have been observing its work and history.

‘A group of young and unscrupulous Dutch designers who created their own projects in a relatively isolated context had come to exhibit in Milan with great success,’ says Hutten. ‘Probably today, with Instagram and other social media platforms, it would be unlikely that such an episode will repeat itself, and that is why we used the internet to collect opinions and anecdotes, questioning ourselves on the influence Droog had and still has. An algorithm then has decided which objects to exhibit. But above all, this exhibition is a celebration of Droog's creativity.’

‘Droog30 – Design or non-design?’ Is an itinerant exhibition curated by Maria Cristina Didero and Richard Hutten

Triennale (Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6, Milano), 15-23 April 2023

Het Nieuwe Instituut, (Museumpark 25, Rotterdam), 2 May – 27 august 2023

droog.com

Museo del Design La Triennale in Milano is showing a comprehensive exhibition dedicated to Angelo Mangiarotti (1921-2012), until 23 April 2023. The exhibition is an homage to the design master, who conceived some of the most influential pieces in the history of design and is now celebrated by one of Italy’s most respectable institutions.

Curated by Fulvio Irace with Francesca Albani, Franz Graf (architecture section), Luca Pietro Nicoletti (sculpture section) and Marco Sammicheli (design section), and realised with the support of Giulio Barazzetta, the exhibition ‘Angelo Mangiarotti: When Structures Take Shape’ will run until 23 April 2023. Among the contributors to the exhibition is Renzo Piano, who had worked closely with Mangiarotti and worked on the exhibition set-up, while the installation was created by Ottavio Di Blasi & Partners. UniFor was part of the exhibition as a technical sponsor, the exhibition design being based on Luca Meda’s metal structure for the ‘Progetto 25’ office partition system.

‘Angelo Mangiarotti: When Structures Take Shape’ at Triennale

This retrospective retraces the more than 60-year career of this eclectic and unique architect through material including designs that have never been shown to the public before. ‘For many years, Triennale Milano has been working on a project devoted to the great Italian masters of design, from Enzo Mari to Ettore Sottsass, to Achille Castiglioni and Pietro Lingeri,’ comments architect Stefano Boeri, president of Triennale. ‘The latest is Angelo Mangiarotti, an eclectic international personality who over the years carried out superb experiments in the fields of architecture, design, sculpture and infrastructure planning. The retrospective gives this key figure in 20th-century design his rightful place in history. We are particularly grateful to Renzo Piano for his participation in this important project – he himself studied under Mangiarotti and worked with him on the 14th International Exhibition in 1968, right here at Triennale.’

The exhibition aims to point out how Mangiarotti was able to approach every design problem as part of a broader issue. ‘The exhibition at Triennale is the first opportunity we have had to reveal the great master’s truly complex nature,’ adds curator Fulvio Irace. ‘This has long been ignored in favour of his reputation as a builder who focused on the processes of material culture and on the techniques of prefabrication. While it is true that Mangiarotti reinvented the eternal archetype of the post and lintel, so to speak, using it throughout his career in an astonishing range of variations, it is equally true that – as the exhibition points out – his work contains a creative vein of great plastic and sculptural power, which places it in the domain of art as well as in that of architecture and design.’

The exhibition catalogue is edited by Irace and published by Electa. As part of the exhibition is also an original film titled Un Angelo su Milano: Mangiarotti e la città (An angel on Milan; Mangiarotti and the city), produced by Muse Factory Projects, founded by Francesca Molteni.

‘Angelo Mangiarotti: When Structures Take Shape’ is on view until 23 April 2023
Triennale, Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6

triennale.org

In front of the Triennale Design Museum, a 1930s early modernist building in Milan’s Parco Sempione is an unlikely neighbour – a squat tower with triangular openings penetrating its skin. It is designed by Francis Kéré, the Burkinabè architect who won the 2022 Pritzker Prize, and as the 23rd International Exhibition of Triennale Milano prepared to open to the public (until 8 January 2023), its finishing paintwork was being applied. With a small entrance, it’s evidently architecture, but what is its function?

‘I want to force people to go on their knees to enter it, you understand? You will enter this building and feel enclosed. What I want to say is, you feel imprisoned in this situation, you think there is no solution, but if you start to lift your head you will see there are openings that show you the sky. […] It will constantly connect you to the sky,’ says Kéré.

The Triennale is titled ‘Unknown Unknowns: An Introduction to Mysteries’, and features a vast amount of art, design, film, and research which seeks to explore or understand the knowledge we will need in the future. It is all overseen by architect Stefano Boeri, president of the institution since 2018, who doesn’t take curatorial ownership over the Triennale but creates the conditions and conversations for ideas to flourish. The ‘Unknown Unknowns’ theme itself emerged from one of those conversations, a panel discussion which brought together interdisciplinary experts to explore what new knowledge had emerged from the 22nd Triennale, titled ‘Broken Nature’.

What became evident within the conversation was just how much wasn’t known, Boeri tells Wallpaper*: ‘What we don't know is so, so, so huge. We know only five per cent of the universe, then this oceanographic researcher started to say, “Well, we know only five per cent of the oceans,” then a neurologist said “Well, we know under five per cent of the synapses.” … At that moment the idea of what we don't know, we don't know started to become present, and we started to imagine an exhibition.’

Two of the participants of the conversation were then appointed lead curators: Ersilia Vaudo, astrophysicist and chief diversity officer at the European Space Agency; and Francis Kéré, who has not only designed the external tower but two sculptures inside the building, as well as coordinating six African nations to take part within the International Participation section – 18 national pavilions sit alongside numerous other curated shows and installations to form what Boeri calls ‘a constellation of exhibitions’.

Central to it all is the main exhibition ‘Unknown Unknowns’, a multi-layered exploration of art, design, and architecture to not only suggest tools to understand the unknowns, but also methods of mapping and cataloguing so information flows between silos of knowledge.

There are playful and poetic resonances between works on display. Upon entering, a huge geodesic sphere by Yuri Suzuki, Sound of the Earth: Chapter 3 (2022), feeds crowdsourced sounds through an algorithm to create an evolving soundscape.

Visually, it segues into eleven handmade clay spheres from Bosco Sodi’s studio in Puerto Escondido, Mexico, Perfect Bodies (2022) celebrating earthen material and qualities of the handmade, introducing the visitor to ideas of building with nature, later picked up not only in other pieces but also in the exhibition architecture by Space Caviar, 3D-printed from locally sourced biodegradable matter.

A Walter Tschinkel cast of the subterranean spaces of an insect nest speaks to an image in a nearby book, the 1678 Mundus Subterraneus, which shows a diagrammatical diptych of the innards of man and Earth side by side. This mapping of the body and planet in turn speaks to nearby early 20th-century Marshall Islands navigational charts, stick constructions of lashed wood and shells which map the locations of waves, wind, and currents. Then the visitor’s eye rises to notice a ceiling-hung projection Gaia (2020), a European Space Agency digital map of 2 billion stars.

This weaving of idea and aesthetic between scales, disciplines, and periods is an exciting way to articulate the open-ended idea of that which is not yet known, and perhaps is in part due to Vaudo’s background, and her inquisitive path through ideas comes from her scientific approach as much as the Triennale curatorial team she collaborated with.

Both these ideas came up in conversation with Kéré, who is cautious about 3D-printing offering a techno-construction answer: ‘Now everyone is talking about printing a house. What is it if we start to print houses for people to live in? But how would they have income? The building sector is mobilising a lot of resources, but also craftsmanship, and if you start to print houses, who can afford it? Who is it for?’

Kéré prefers to focus on collaboration and existing skills as methods for future solutions. ‘If you want to create something, if you want to build a world of tomorrow, you have to check what existed yesterday. We call it yesterday's tomorrow.’

For Burkina Faso’s contribution to the Triennale’s international section, Kéré offers a simple wall. A Burkinabè woman and her daughter are painting it, uninterested in the watching art crowd, just simply getting on with a creative act central to the nation’s architecture for generations. Using natural pigmentations, they inscribe the wall with symbols and patterns, each carrying specific meaning – luck, protection, solidity, ancestral memory – communally painted as an act of embedded knowledge.

The girl is learning from her mother, who in turn learnt it from her mother-in-law, an 86-year-old who practices but could not travel to Milan. It is an act not only of decoration, but also maintenance, the surfaces needing to be reapplied every few years. Kéré sees in this the function of community collaboration: it skills up the very people who will live in a place with the knowledge needed to improve and repair it.

However, in the Anthropocene, maintenance is not enough. Europe is overheating, and Kéré says ‘in Burkina Faso it’s raining randomly.’ The unknown unknown impact of our culture on nature is explored in another main exhibition, Fondation Cartier’s ‘Mondo Reale’, where the first thing we encounter is a Ron Mueck artwork of a naked and unimpressed cross-armed figure stranded on a boat. From Alex Cerveny’s mesmerising painting pulling in culture, nature, anxiety and existentialism, to Sho Shibuya’s daily working over The New York Times’ front page in apparent desperation to cover up the daily despair with new artistic meaning, there is anxiety in this exhibition.

This is most exemplified in Artavazd Peleshyan’s film La Nature (2020), a relentless edit of Earth’s power manifested through landslides, storms, volcanoes, and lightning to an unremitting soundtrack. Facing the screen, two rows of immaculately upholstered modernist chairs invite us to sit back and passively observe the violence. It’s hard to stay the duration; the violent shocks are greater than the comfort of the chairs, perhaps deliberately to force visitors to escape and initiate new kinds of conversations, ones needed to collectively face unknown unknowns.

Back outside, the tower connects the Earth to the stars. Kéré says it’s big enough for a few people to enter at once, and as such is not a space of solitude but collaborative exploration: ‘I want us to have the courage to escape the situation. Related to the unknown unknowns, between us and our little, little problems, there is the sky, and it is unlimited – and there are a lot of solutions that we don't know yet, but could contribute to solve our issues.’

INFORMATION

‘Unknown Unknowns: An Introduction to Mysteries’ is at Triennale Design Museum until 8 January 2023
triennale.org

ADDRESS

Triennale Milano
Viale Alemagna
620121 Milan

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Designed in 1965 by Ettore Sottsass for his friend, the lithographer and printer Giovanni Lana, Casa Lana in Milan is the latest acquisition for the permanent collection of the Triennale di Milano. The cultural institution’s recent wave of acquisitions, arranged by its new design, fashion and crafts curator Marco Sammicheli, features some real gems by a host of Italian designers, including Carlo Mollino, Joe Colombo and Vico Magistretti. 

Casa Lana at Triennale Design Museum

‘The opportunity to secure Casa Lana came to us thanks to the Lana heirs and to the generosity of the Ettore Sottsass Archive,’ says Sammicheli. ‘We could not miss this opportunity due to the extraordinary integrity of the apartment. It is as if Casa Lana was frozen in time, precisely as the architect designed it. This allows us to present a project in its totality, integrity and strength.’ 

Giovanni Lana did not have much of a budget when he commissioned Sottsass, but the friends came to an agreement, and the resulting compact apartment epitomises the Italian architect’s pioneering approach to design. 

Pioneering interior design by Ettore Sottsass

Packed full of clever spatial tricks and brilliantly executed, Casa Lana neatly demonstrates how some past issues remain significant today, and offers up unexpected solutions in terms of lifestyle, materiality and small-space living. It comprises a tight sequence of zones, or ‘rooms within a room’, dedicated to different functions. To save space, Sottsass eliminated corridors and emphasised the idea that all spaces have been conceived to be part of a whole. The combination of art and architecture is apparent in the different colours and materials that help define the various functions of each specific zone. 

‘Today, Triennale di Milano gives the world an extraordinary surprise: the faithful reconstruction of part of Casa Lana by Ettore Sottsass, that Triennale took apart and philologically reassembled thanks to the collaboration of Iskra Grisogono from the Sottsass archive, and the dialogue with the original owner’s family,’ comments Triennale president, architect Stefano Boeri. ‘From today, Milan hosts a veritable time machine, created by one of the geniuses of 20th century design.’

Adds Sammicheli: ‘The fact that Sottsass’ footsteps are still present in the original furniture is astonishing for us. That’s what makes this apartment exceptional.’

INFORMATION

Casa Lana is on view at Triennale Design Museum 
triennale.org

American artist Saul Steinberg (1914 – 1999) loved Milan. He lived in the city between 1933 and 1941 while studying architecture at the Politecnico and creating satirical vignettes for local newspapers, and he dedicated many of his works to Milan. A new exhibition at Triennale Design Museum, produced in collaboration with publishing house Electa and curated by Italo Lupi and Marco Belpoliti alongside Francesca Pellicciari, explores the artist’s connections with the city while celebrating his genius. 

‘Saul Steinberg Milano New York’ at Triennale Design Museum

‘We are incredibly happy that Steinberg has returned home,’ says Triennale Museum director, Marco Sammicheli, who worked alongside the curatorial team to create the exhibition. ‘Milan was his home, and it’s here that he started building his visual world.’

The exhibition comprises 350 works that include pencil, pen and pastel drawings, works created with rubber stamps and watercolours, paper masks that explore identity and reflect on the human body, sculptures and collages – a series of techniques and styles that exemplify Steinberg’s multifaceted oeuvre. ‘Steinberg is stratified and complex, but in his complexity he uses the most simple thing: drawing,’ adds Belpoliti.

The Milan museum worked closely with institutions including the Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York’s Jewish Museum, as well as the artist’s friends and collectors of the his work, both in Italy and abroad. The exhibition also previews the donation to the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense from the Saul Steinberg Foundation.

Steinberg’s view of cities (be it Milan, Venice or imaginary cityscapes of his illustrations) is a starting point for the exhibition, and among the most important works on view is a piece he created specifically for Milan. Four preparatory drawings, each up to 10m long and concertina-folded, were photographically enlarged and applied to a curved wall created by BBPR architects for the tenth Triennale, in 1954. In this work, the curators explain, Steinberg’s affinity for the line as a narrative device begins to take shape, something that will later become one of the artist’s most distinctive motifs. 

Behind the scenes at the museum

Triennale Design Museum has documented the exhibition’s set-up, designed by Italo Lupi, Ico Migliore and Mara Servetto, for the curved gallery space that is part of its Palazzo dell’Arte. 

Here, we take a peek behind the scenes at the museum, as the exhibition was being installed. 

INFORMATION
‘Saul Steinberg: Milano New York’ is at Triennale Design Museum until 13 March 2022

triennale.org

ADDRESS

Triennale Milano
Viale Alemagna 6
20121
Milan

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

The Board of Directors of Milan’s Fondazione Triennale has announced the appointment of Wallpaper* Milan Editor Marco Sammicheli as curator of the Design, Fashion and Crafts for the Triennale, as well as Triennale Design Museum Director

A design critic and curator, Sammicheli has been part of the Wallpaper* team since 2017, working on strengthening the brand’s relationship with Italian companies and institutions, and taking part in editorial and commercial projects for the magazine and digital platform. 

Sammicheli has also worked as a design educator at Politecnico di Milano and Shenkar College of Design and Engineering and in Tel Aviv. As a curator, his exhibitions include ‘Designing the Sacred’ at the Venice International Architecture Exhibition in 2014, 1+1+1 at Assab One, and a show of previously unseen watercolours by Steven Holl presented at Antonia Jannone gallery in 2018. Sammicheli was also part of the curatorial team for the 2017 exhibition Italian Beauty, on the career of Italian architect Mario Bellini.

In his new role, Sammicheli will oversee the museum’s exhibitions, collaborate on the institution’s design research and grow the permanent collections. He follows on from Joseph Grima, who will remain part of the Triennale working on the 23rd International Exhibition scheduled for 2022.

The Museum was established in 2019, as part of Triennale Director Stefano Boeri's transformation of the Milan institution, and is an integral part of its cultural hub. Home to a 1600-piece strong permanent design collection, it regularly collaborates with leading designers and design brands to expand its offering. ‘Marco Sammicheli's appointment as Superintendent of the Museo del Design Italiano, and his presence within the scientific committee of the Triennale Foundation, affirm the important role of the Museum for the Milan Triennale's future,' says Boeri. ‘Especially looking forward to the extraordinary opportunity given by the [upcoming] International exhibition.'

‘I am grateful to president Stefano Boeri and the board for their trust; I will work to implement the collection of the Museum as well as concentrate on temporary exhibitions dedicated to storytelling and promotion of Italian design,' says Sammicheli. ‘I will also continue my work as International Relations Chief Officer, promoting the pavilions for the 2022 International Exhibition'.

Sarah Douglas, Wallpaper* Editor-in-Chief, comments: ‘I am delighted for Marco – he is so deserving of this important and influential position. He has been such a huge asset to the Wallpaper* family and I can’t wait to see all the brilliant things he brings to the Triennale.'

INFORMATION

triennale.org