23rd Triennale Milano, a guide to the Exhibition Design

The main themed exhibition, “Unknown Unknowns”, features a layout designed by Space Caviar, with Joseph Grima returning to his Triennale (he was among other things Director of the Design Museum) and returning to the theme of exhibition design by reconsidering some of his earlier ideas, proposing a project that interpreted the curator's initial suggestions. Referring to the new methods that are being studied for future lunar constructions, where 3D printing is used as a technical model that can be used with extraterrestrial matter, the installation was conceived as an experimental laboratory. The main supports were printed directly (by WASP, a world-leading Italian company for 3D printing) in the halls of the Triennale, using poor materials such as clay mixed with rice husks (in collaboration with RiceHouse, recent winner of the Compasso d'Oro 2022 for its research) and with the intention of recycling these elements and materials after use. The tops are made of transparent glass shaped ad hoc and allow a glimpse of the internal structure, which is also designed according to some curvilinear lines that derive from a graphic grid visible all over the floor, which punctuates and redesigns the perception of the “curved” exhibition gallery according to a new formal logic, deformed and orbital, which gravitates around the central fulcrum. The space can thus be explored along multiple trajectories that slow the pace at certain circular and permeable volumes, enclosed within suspended curtains made of small metal rings, in which sound works require the visitor to pause before resuming the journey.

The general layout of the 20 international pavilions was curated and designed by Francis Keré (Pritzker Architect 2022) with an almost abstract and orderly language, following an orthogonal grid of white walls resulting in long corridors that lead to rooms/spaces, then rearranged by the single nations. (The access to this section of the Triennale is from a somewhat anonymous direct entrance from the atrium of Palazzo dell'Arte or from a secondary access which we suggest and which passes through Corridoio Rosso (the Red Corridor), a space designed by Margherita Palli for the exhibition of the same name curated by Giovanni Agosti and Jacopo Stoppa). In the distribution and ordering of the sequence of spaces the best-known international nations are located on the perimeter, while a central section houses the African participations, in an ideal embrace of these “emerging” nations, some of which are participating for the first time, presenting their vision of art and culture to the world. In this section of the Triennale, Kéré was also personally involved in two specific projects: “Yesterday's Tomorrow”, a spatial installation that acts as the fulcrum of these spaces, in which the visitor can circulate externally or internally following a spiral plan, admiring a graphic wall decoration typical of African countries and listening to voices that, like in an ancestral tale, try and capture the public's attention by directing it towards the themes of the Exhibition; an installation in the pavilion of Burkina Faso, his country of origin, in which a long wall was created in a participatory action, by hand and with poor materials, and decorated with the country’s vernacular signs and symbols, attempting to give new life to this tradition of visual and architectural communication.

France brings curatorship and exhibition design together by assigning the tasks to a trio of authors and designers (Pablo Bras, Juliette Gelli and Romain Guillet) in which the extreme attention to the materials in relation to the works on display and their story create a real space that is extremely material and odorous, complemented by a virtual space in an extensive internet platform. The team chose precisely this space because it is the only one that has access a natural light source, from which the photovoltaic energy for some of the elements comes from and with which one of the artists on show also created a natural light installation. The exhibition is mono-material, made up of 2024 bricks made in Milan from raw earth, a material that symbolises impermanence because it is reversible in its physical states. The bricks design the walkable floor, but their modularity allows new volumes with other functions to grow from the elements on the ground: a corner dedicated to reading, one to listening, another to food tasting, etc. At the foot of each object is a visual graphic sign engraved in the bricks that rapidly refers to a legend which is screen-printed on the wall. 

The Netherlands are staged by the young and promising Rotterdam-based Italian Studio Ossidiana (Alessandra Covini and Giovanni Bellotti) with an international educational and professional experience. Entering a single, compact room, we are faced with material islands made up of different conglomerates mixed with coloured paste materials. The perimeter of the space is covered in a long drapery made of several layers of fabric, and cleverly use the material to roll up or move aside, displaying texts or captions, or “rip open” (fixed using embroidery) onto small exhibition boxes. On the ground, a resounding expanse of small shells makes us feel the weight of each step.

The island of Cyprus, again with curators who are also the designers of the space (Christiana Ioannou, Daphne Kokkini, Spyros Nasainas, Christos Papastergiou), presents a layout that is as abstract as it is architectural. Following the logic of the Hortus Conclusus, which here becomes Hortus Ignotus, a “simple” wall placed at an angle, enigmatic and exclusive, with precise and definite openings onto real and virtual views, and a small, semi-open but inaccessible door, makes us feel we are outside a magical world, where the lush nature of the great ancient Mediterranean gardens takes its course.

The “Padiglione Italia - La Tradizione del Nuovo” (Italian Pavilion - The Tradition of the New), curated by Marco Sammicheli and exceptionally located outside the area of the international pavilions, curiously overlaps with the Design Museum (of which Sammicheli himself is the director). It features a layout designed by up-and-coming studio Zaven (of Venetians Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno), which interpreted the stories the curator collected from the extraordinary richness of Italian design history. Objects, works and documents, very numerous and well displayed, are placed here in small theatres and fragments of architecture and there in unexpected positions that stimulate the visitor's curiosity. They are staged to make us understand the stories and the people behind the objects, in a maze-like and non-unidirectional path, between sectional archipelagos and architectural glimpses with points of view and discovery of the exhibition space. The curved perimeter walls dialogue with new open, orthogonal and colourful rooms, while tops and bases in gasbeton monoblocks and straps hold and suspend panels or objects. The set-up of this Italian Pavilion ends almost seamlessly by merging with another set-up, also designed by Zaven, which hosts the exhibition Alchemic Laboratory curated by Ingrid Paoletti.

The collateral exhibition, “Mondo Reale” (Real World), was designed by Formafantasma, “the” trendy studios of the moment, so successful that it has also designed the set-up for the Venice Art Biennale at the same time. Following a logic of analyisng the ephemeral aspect of an exhibition, between wonder and mystery, the members of Formafantasma thought of an idea of “ecology” as a narrative element for a layout that could be “gentle and empathetic” with the works, using light and low-impact materials, recovering partitions from the previous exhibition and reused elements from other exhibitions, as well as recycled materials and a surprising and refined preponderant use of sheets of paper that make up large spatial partitions. Simple white paper panels, carefully crafted and hung from one other, suspended from the ceiling and raised from the ground, filter the lights and draw curvilinear loops that widen and narrow throughout the exhibition, defining each space. In a rarefied overall context, concrete blocks, covered at the top with a metal plate that marks their edges, trace low barriers or resting places while monochrome textile floors identify special observation areas.

A final note on the graphic coordination of the exhibition spaces and the visual identity project carried out by New York studio 2x4. The coordinated image system is based on a symbolic and metaphorical interpretation of a beam of light illuminating coloured segments of planets in a dark and unknown universe. A new typeface called “Ignoto”, in which the O is a thin slice of the moon that is always oriented differently, fills all the lettering and headings of the various spaces and title pages.