Hasta La Ideas

by Paolo Ferrarini of Future Concept Lab

The Triennale Design Museum in Milan is a dynamic museum, conceived to be renewed with different themes and offering visitors unusual views, standpoints and trails. After answering the question “what is Italian design?” with the exhibit “The Seven Obsessions Of Italian Design,” the museum’s new show, “Serie e Fuori Serie,” presents a new look at Italian design that focuses on the cycles of design.

Directed by Silvana Annicchiarico and under the scientific direction of Andrea Branzi, this year’s interpretation illustrates the contemporary scene of Italian design, looking at experimental research to get to mass markets, using handicraft materials as well as sophisticated technology and how start-up companies get to the big global corporations. The name, Serie e Fuori Serie, stands for the extremes of the loop in which the most advanced, independent experimentation and research fuels industrial production and vice-versa. The latter cycle includes the custom-built prototype or the one-off piece.

Divided into broad theme areas, large mass productions, small mass productions and experimental and research design (eco-design, research prototypes, technological research, expressive research, superior craftsmanship, special pieces and custom-built pieces), the installation makes the concept clear with every detail perfectly underlined, thanks to the work of Antonio Citterio and Partners and the graphics by Studio FM. (Pictured above right “16 animali” from Enzo Mari and on the left “Tre Bok” from Gabriele De Vecchi)

The result is an impressive collection of big and small pieces, from the Alessi nutcracker to a very rare Ferrari prototype (pictured right).