The biggest design museum in Europe is coming to Milan

In Spring 2020 the largest design pole in Europe is going to open in the former industrial area between via Ceresio and via Bramante – Paolo Sarpi area.

Here the Associazione Disegno Industriale (Adi) and the Fondazione Adi Collezione Compasso d’Oro they will open the Adi Compasso d’Oro Museum with an exhibition space of 3,000 square meters. The project, started in 2011, will host the historical collection of the Compasso d’Oro, from 1954 to today.

The Compasso d’Oro award begun in 1954 from a Gio Ponti’s idea. It is the oldest and prestigious design award in Europe.

The exhibition, curated by Migliore + Servetto, will be super-technological and will offer interactive experiences and will be enriched every year with contemporary elements from the new awards.

In the area will be located not only the museum but also the offices of the Adi Foundation, a library, a bookshop, a restaurant and the historical archive that collects over 60 years of Italian design historical documents.

This great museum will go alongside with the one at the Triennale, there will be no competition between them, they will create a large museum system. Imagine the unique interaction that may exist between this new museum, the Triennale, the Salone del Mobile/Fuorisalone and all the Milanese cultural and museum sites. As the president of the Salone del Mobile Claudio Luti said at the press conference a few weeks ago, Milan is design because only here there are the right conditions: here there is creativity, inspiration but also design school, companies and entrepreneurs that can turn ideas into products.

With this spirit and on the occasion of the next Design Week a very interesting book has been published: The Design City. Milan: extraordinary lab (by Marco Sammicheli and Anna Mainoli, published by Forma in collaboration with the Salone del Mobile, pp.416, € 87 on Amazon) which tells about 80 creative, designers and architects, through archival photos, unpublished photographs, interviews and stories from the heirs of the 20th century masters. Piero Portaluppi, Gio Ponti, Bruno Munari, the Castiglioni brothers, Vico Magistretti, Gae Aulenti, but also the contemporaries like Alessandro Mendini, Michele De Lucchi, Patricia Urquiola …, 350 photos to reveal the places, their studies and their relationship with Milan. A sort of autobiography of a group of people and a city.

In Milan there is the history and the future of design.

Rendering courtesy Migliore+Servetto