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At the Triennale for the Salone del Mobile: all the design there is

It turns 100 next year, but the Milan Triennale doesn’t show it at all. It was 1933 when the institution, first housed in the Royal Villa of Monza, moved to Palazzo dell’Arte in front of the Sempione Park. Who does not know the austere facade designed by Giovanni Muzioon behalf of the Bernocchi family, enlightened entrepreneurs who then donated the building to the city?

If you have already been there or if you still miss it, these are the right days to cross the steps of the Palazzo dell’Arte and get lost in the many exhibitions scheduled: outside, the city is an explosion of events and temporary exhibitions for the Furniture expo which testify to the vitality of international design, here in the Triennale we understand instead where it all started and where everything could go.

The idea is to carve out at least a couple of hours (alert: open all weekend from 11 to 21, take into account when organizing your Design Week Agenda). We started with a break in café just renovated by architect Luca Cipellettiwhich has transformed the environment into a pleasant urban jungle with banana trees and palm trees (for the end of the tour, reserve a stop in the Coffee in the Garden overlooking the famous Fountain of the Mysterious Baths designed by Giorgio de Chirico in the seventies, a splash of color in the green of the park).

Until 12 June the Triennale hosts a series of events and exhibitions, waiting to open the 23rd Universal Exposition in just over a month (you will have to come back because the event is always worth a visit: this year the theme is reflection on the unknown …) : we have selected four “love at first sight” stages both for those who know the place and for those who visit it for the first time.

Visit

As soon as you enter, head immediately to the right and prepare your mobile phone: the setting up of the permanent collection of the Design Museum it is a feast for the eyes. The chronological scan and the use of key words on the walls make the exhibition that presents the most iconic pieces of Made in Italy from 1946 to 1981 understandable to all. Up Chair from Gaetano Pesce or the Five hundred Fiat:

Part of the installation of the Design Museum, on the ground floor of the Triennale, ph: Alessandro Saletta and Delfino Sisto Legnani

© Alessandro Saletta

Another part of the exhibition of the Design Museum, on the ground floor of the Triennale, ph: Alessandro Saletta and Delfino Sisto Legnani

© Alessandro Saletta

The journey begins with the rigorous design of Vico Magistretti and Franco Albini and ends with the “games” of the great Ettore Sottsass: we are in the Eighties and also the made in Italy is experiencing the “Milan to drink”.

To continue the story, just go up the staircase of honor and go to the right where it is set up, for the cure di Christoph Radl and with the 80s soundtrack by Seth Troxler the exhibition Memphis Again. Dark tunnel and platform that looks like a walkway: one after the other we find the most famous objects of the design collective born in Milan in the 1980s around the figure of Ettore Sottsass. An exhibition that is an explosion of joy, color, liveliness, in an almost night club atmosphere. Beautiful, it reminds us that design – and here we see pieces signed by Sottsass, Aldo Cibic, Michele De Lucchi – is not just functionality, but also game, fun, irony.

Once out of the exhibition, just cross the suspension bridge inside the building to savor Lana House, an interior of a private residence that Ettore Sottsass, one of the most extraordinary architect and designer, designed in the mid-1960s in Milan: you enter it today and you no longer want to leave that living room designed to be there to chat and listen to music. Around Casa Lana, the exhibition Ettore Sottsass. Structure and color with paintings, drawings and photographs dedicated to the “ritual of inhabited space”.

The entrance to the Memphis Again exhibition, set up at the Triennale until June 12, ph: Alessandro Saletta and Delfino Sisto Legnani

Still lightness and color: always on the first floor, in the Impluvium, a 10-minute pop-break with Cactusrama from Guframwhich celebrates the 50th anniversary of one of his most famous pieces with an exhibition that includes 12 different versions and all very colorful of the Cactus in the name of joy and non-conformism.

One of Gugram’s Cactusrama rooms, set up on the first floor of the Triennale until 12 June

After all this immersion in the history of made in Italy, a different ending, to remind us to exercise the gaze. On the first floor of the Triennale, thanks to the partnership with Fondation Cartier for the contemporary artthere The modern life of Raymond Depardon (crazy sets by Théa Alberola). French photographer and director, signed by the Magnum agency, Depardon is one of the great masters of the lens: explorer of different worlds (from the deserted squares of Turin to the French rural villages of his childhood), he places his deep, capable gaze on every place to capture the essence.

Of all the photos on display, many in large format, this one has bewitched us:

A splendid shot from Raymond Depardon’s ‘Glaslow’ series, visible at the Triennale until 12 June

Source: Vanity Fair

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