In the week leading to Christmas I had a free Wednesday afternoon in Milan and grabbed the chance to visit the Triennale Design Museum. Paolo, our Marketing Director, had attended the inauguration on December 6, but, obviously, the worst day to savour the splendour of the exhibition was on the opening day… luckily, when I visited, the exhibition was not too over-full, so I had the time to go back and forth, contemplating, taking notes, just the way I like viewing.

Once inside the Triennale I felt immediately at home: the Museum is designed by De Lucchi, the exhibition of Fiorucci was on the lower floor… but that is not all. At the start of the day, there were only 3 of us in the entire museum: me and a famous Indian designer, with his interpreter. And who was the designer? Ironically, another familiar face: Satyendra Pakhalé, who, at the Triennale, took part at Design On Stage. A great taster.

As we know, the Museum is not set out as a traditional permanent exhibition, but instead has a series of “long-term short stay exhibitions” of around a year. The first is dedicated to “obsessions” in Italian design: a path that winds through 7 themed spaces, where pieces that have re-written design history from the ‘30s, and since been eulogised by videos made by some of the most renowned Italian directors (Olmi, Martone, Luchetti, Corsicato…). Greeting us at the entrance, a resounding work by Peter Greenaway entitled Ouverture. The herald of trumpets! 2000 years of Italian creativity.

In anticipation of going into greater depth in later posts, I will limit myself to making a general comment on the exhibition. Mine was a very positive experience: the history-graphic interpretation by curator Andrea Branzi, which, on first impression seems a bit cryptic, does, in fact, allow us to experience the works as they were originally designed to be, transforming them into veritable cultural objects, rendered with an intrinsic symbolic value that makes them unique, irrespective of the “who-designed-then-and-when”. The arrangement allows for various levels of interpretation, from one which is very aesthetically tight to a more technical and expert one, but, in my opinion, it transgresses in a couple of aspects: the videos of the Italian directors cannot receive the appreciation they deserve, as they are projected onto giant surfaces but in a limited space, while the informative presentations on the mini-display video alongside the works are graphically poor and too long and articulated to be of use. What a pity too, that, on the day I attended, the section dedicated to works of light was closed for refurbishment.

Here are some other opinions of the Triennale Design Museum:

• a reportage with photos from Designerblog
• De Zeen (in English, with lots of beautiful photos)
• Style And Fashion (from where we shot the video)
• PataSign

Technorati Tags: ceramics, de lucchi, design, designtalestudio, fiorucci, milano, museo design triennale, pakhalé, triennale, triennale design museum

Pubblicato il 10 January 2008 da Alberto in Various | |