In Milan, Every Third Year’s the Charm

This article is part of our Design special report previewing 2023 Milan Design Week.

Each year, overwhelmed visitors to Milan Design Week get a brief opportunity to stroll through a tranquil park on their way to the Triennale Milano, this year celebrating its 100th anniversary. Somewhat confusingly, the term Triennale is used to refer to both the building and to the design exhibition that takes place there every three years — but not in 2023. This year, instead, a mix of diverse shows, heavy on things from the past, will combine to tell the story of how design arrived in the present.

What is now the Triennale exposition began in 1923 as a biennial in the outskirts of Milan. In 1933, it moved to the current building, officially the Palazzo dell’Arte, designed by the architect Giovanni Muzio, in the city center. (That is also when it switched to a triennial.)

“It is a paradoxical building,” said Stefano Boeri, the architect who has been the Triennale’s president since 2018, via Zoom. It was designed, he said, “to represent the power of the Fascist empire. The monumentality of the space is evident everywhere. But, at the same time, I have never experienced a space which is so agile and flexible in the way you can use it.”

According to Marco Sammicheli, the Triennale’s design curator, the exposition was from the early days “a national institution devoted to material culture and creativity.” Before the Salone del Mobile began in 1961, the Triennale was the only place to showcase design pieces. The most recent exposition, in 2022, was titled “Unknown Unknowns,” a somewhat theoretical show that explored diverse topics including the role of gravity on design and developments in extraterrestrial architecture. Before that, in 2019, was “Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival,” organized by Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art.

According to Ms. Antonelli, a “motto” behind “Broken Nature” was that “We are going to become extinct as a species. So we have no control over the fact.” The idea was to explore how we might design a better extinction and a better legacy. When asked whether the pandemic that erupted the next year put a damper on those ambitions, she replied, “If anything, the pandemic strengthened that belief that we’re not in control of the universe, so we better behave.” In her view, “The pandemic gave a good shock to design, and now it’s better than ever.”

The first thing visitors will see upon entering the building this year will be a wide-ranging survey called “Museo del Design Italiano” (Museum of Italian Design), drawn from the institution’s vast archives and curated by Mr. Sammicheli. It represents a 100-year journey of design in Italy, in all its forms — interior design, architecture, industrial design and mass production. Along the path are dioramas: three houses, one bathroom, one garage, one office and one design studio.

“I want to portray the fact that design is everywhere,” Mr. Sammicheli said. “Sometimes you forget that what you see in a bathroom or in a computer belongs to design.” Mr. Boeri added that the exhibition would allow visitors to see very significant contributions that had been forgotten along the way. “Sixty or seventy years ago, Olivetti did exactly what Apple did 30 years ago,” he said.

The survey corridor terminates in a space that will house a temporary show that will change about every four months. (The “Museo” itself will remain until March 2025, to be replaced by the next Triennale.) During Design Week, it will contain an exhibition, also curated by Mr. Sammicheli, titled “Text,” exploring the relationship between text, image and product, especially as these relate to the fashion and textile industries.

In addition to “Museo del Design Italiano” and “Text,” several other significant exhibitions will be on view throughout the week. In connection with Casa Lana, a private Milanese residence designed in the 1960s by Ettore Sottsass — a permanent feature of the museum — will be “Ettore Sottsass. La Parola” (The Word), consisting of drawings, objects and writings intended to explore the Italian designer’s narrative process.

Continuing through Design Week is a show by the Australian artist Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, who began her painting career in 2005, when she was 80. The exhibition, which is a collaboration with the Fondation Cartier Pour l’Art Contemporain in Paris, contains 30 monumental works, drawn from public and private collections.

Also on view will be “Angelo Mangiarotti: When Structures Take Shape.” Mr. Mangiarotti, who died in 2012 at 91, was something of a Renaissance man — architect, urban planner, designer and engineer. Mr. Boeri described him as “someone who was a little bit forgotten in recent years.” However, his versatility in creating chairs, buildings, railway stations and much, much more made him timeless. “He was very sophisticated in changing the scale of his formal obsessions,” Mr. Boeri added. The exhibition contains materials covering 60 years, many of which have never been on public display before.

By happy coincidence, 2023 is also the 30th anniversary of the Dutch collective Droog Design, which debuted to great fanfare in Milan in 1993. During Design Week, it will be celebrated with a show organized by Richard Hutten, an original member of the collective, and Maria Cristina Didero, the curatorial director of Design Miami. “I have a theory,” said Mr. Sammicheli, “that Droog shares a common ground with Italian radical movements and the ’80s avant-garde. They all felt that design practice was an affair for disobedience. People from the Salone del Mobile were staring at them like, ‘Oh my God! These are barbarians coming from the north!’”

Mr. Hutten concurs: “Back in 1993, the world was a different place. There was no internet, no mobile phones, nothing. All of a sudden a bunch of young crazy and wild designers from Holland came to Milan, showing a fresh and new approach to design. It landed with a shock.” According to Ms. Didero, “The driving force and success behind Droog’s objects and their fascinating storytelling is packaged in their rebellious and ironic outlook that rejects labels and categorizations.”

Mr. Boeri disclosed that before his presidency ends, in 2026, he would like to restore part of the building to its original design. Where the gift shop and other later additions now sit was once an impluvium, a Roman-era cistern that sat in a soaring 50-foot-high space that was open to the sky. The reinstated monumentality could now be used to celebrate a more diverse and democratic design world. Now that’s a paradox.

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