A gift to Milan

In May editorial Nicola Di Battista affirms that the Lombard capital is once again expressing a sentiment that can also be quickly transmitted to the ever-increasing numbers of people flocking to visit the numerous initiatives and the many cultural events offered by the city.

This article was originally published on Domus 1002, May 2016.

Last September we had hoped that Milan might once again become a truly contemporary place of our contemporaneity: a city fully aware of its means, with the capacity to compete on a par with today’s global world. A city with a renewed desire to be at the forefront and to be so by rising out of itself, from its own potential and from what Italy can express. A city keen to cultivate ambitions, not by chasing after other people’s dreams but starting from what it has and what already permanently belongs to it.

Today we can affirm that our hope is being fulfilled, and rapidly beginning to resemble a rebirth; a rebirth envisaged and resolutely sought by people who know they have what it takes to make it truly contemporary; people in full command of their own means and well aware of their strong points. It has to be said that this buoyant atmosphere of rebirth is now clearly felt by all. It is expressed by the women and by the men who live and work in Milan, be they Milanese or not. There is a contagious awareness that the Lombard capital is once again expressing, with a naturalness and firmness, a sentiment that can also be quickly transmitted to the ever-increasing numbers of people flocking to visit the numerous initiatives and the many cultural events offered by the city. A few months ago we could only hope that Milan might regain its former strength but this has in fact now happened. It has happened so forcefully and strikingly that even the most hardened sceptics are stunned. Clearly, this is not enough to sum up precisely what is happening in the city. It is simply the ascertainment of something irrefutable, the impact of which cannot be ignored and is expressed in people’s awareness of the fresh air breathed in the city. In a fuller attempt to understand this phenomenon a little better, we realise that it cannot be ascribed to any one protagonist. Instead, it seems to be the outcome of numerous factors combined.

There is a contagious awareness that the Lombard capital is once again expressing a sentiment that can also be quickly transmitted to the ever-increasing numbers of people flocking to visit the many cultural events offered by the city

Among these, to be sure, is the determination to shake off the long economic crisis that has gripped Europe and especially Italy, and which in Milan has been felt more than elsewhere; but it is also due to the practice of a calmer policy, more attentive to public affairs and to the needs of citizens; or again, to a widespread and good quality private entrepreneurship that is doing its best to catch up and compete with internationalised markets. At the end of the day, however, the factor that seems to sum up all the others is the new and mighty, public and private supply of culture: an energetic and persevering culture that drives and underpins everything else. On closer examination, the real novelty is precisely this: a novelty that can even overturn the affirmation that “you can’t eat culture”, a complaint commonly repeated in these times of crisis as a noble excuse to endorse a utilitarianism that can only depress communities. Many have again by now realised and are convinced that whilst it is certainly true that we can’t subsist on culture alone, it is equally true that without culture we are dead. The novelty is that this absolute necessity has never been imposed from on high, by some institution or by some disciplinary area of knowledge in particular. On the contrary, it has gained substance and form from grass roots: at first sporadically by decreeing the success, in public too, of individual initiatives or enterprises and then gradually transformed into a collective urge to do more and better, both in public and in private spheres.

We want to mention the particular period which the city of Milan has been enjoying for some time now. In it a new history is under way

This favourable moment experienced by the city then found an incredible and unexpected international megaphone in the 2015 Expo, which gave Milan a formidable and truly unique worldwide spotlight. This was initially greeted by its citizens with aloofness and indifference. But as the event progressed, their coldness was transformed at first into curiosity and later into expectation of a change, long awaited and now at last within reach, that could be really and truly achieved. All this aroused in Milan’s citizens the necessary motivations to lend their support to the Expo, enabling it to best perform its institutional task of managing a complex international event. Furthermore it helped to create the climate that for months surrounded the whole city, which had in the meantime equipped itself with a truly impressive palimpsest of major and minor cultural initiatives that were certainly of benefit to all. Now that Expo is over there is much talk of the fate of the infrastructural areas built for it and of the possible reuse of its remaining buildings. In that regard it is right to discuss in depth what seems to be the real challenge that ought most to interest Milan and its citizens in the coming years: will or won’t this large area succeed in really becoming a permanent part of the 21st-century city? The risk is that it may more simply be turned into yet another area capable of containing, maybe well and with heaps of advanced technology, certain functions but no more than that. In which case it will be a defeat and once again an opportunity missed. The destiny of this part of the city will clearly depend on the political government of its territory, on the business and industrial forces involved, and on how well the whole city may cogently express its views on the future of this area, to be asserted reasonably but tenaciously. Only a cohesion between diverse institutional, university, entrepreneurial, associative and other civil entities can produce the cooperation needed to achieve such an ambitious project.

We shall see in the coming months what the city and its citizens will have accomplished. However, we can already maintain that the post-Expo period for Milan is a success. The city has already won that battle and has changed, as confirmed by the fact that since it closed its Expo doors last October, its supply of culture has by no means dwindled. Indeed it may have grown even more incisive and lasting. In this framework in fact, the stubborn will to reopen the Triennale as an international exhibition was immediately perceived by the city as an outstanding opportunity to make sure the achievements of recent times would not be wasted. Last month, after a 20-year absence, the Milan Triennale swung back into life with the opening of its XXI edition, titled “Design after design”. It has thus restored to the Milanese, and to the wider world, one of their most prestigious and long-lived cultural institutions. In step with the times, the Triennale reopened with an absolute novelty for its long history: it came out of Muzio’s building and spread into the city with exhibitions and events in numerous highly prestigious locations. One of these was even the rediscovered Villa Reale in Monza, which is where the whole thing originated in the 1920s. Some criticism was levelled at the Triennale prior to its opening, with one or two complaints about the absence of a general curator, but so far not many reflections on its ongoing exhibitions. Domus will be covering these in its forthcoming issues. In any case, we can say that one preliminary goal has already been accomplished: visitors flocked to see the various exhibitions all through April. The community took part, and responded actively to what the city had to offer, which means that the Triennale did an excellent job in staging such a brilliant comeback but also that Milan has regained its former momentum. But now it is up to the big missing factor. It is up to the critics to scrutinize, analyse, judge, place and express clear viewpoints, to adopt a stance, to put together or to divide. It is now up to the disciplines to speak up. The institutions, the curators and the industrialists have done their bit, the citizens and visitors have responded en masse. What about the critics? We shall wait and see.

The fact that Milan has come back into its own is not a small matter to do with this city only. On the contrary, it is of the utmost interest to the nation as a whole

The fact that Milan has come back into its own is not a small matter to do with this city only. On the contrary, it is of the utmost interest to the nation as a whole. Thus in fact all of our many cities, large and small, are urged and encouraged to go back to being their true selves. Each with their own specificity, history, dreams and ambitions can escape the inauspicious sameness that has hung so heavily over our recent past. Today we can again cultivate the differences between communities and between peoples as a rich resource. We can go back to Pier Paolo Pasolini and his prophetic reminder that the consumer civilisation had destroyed “the various particular realities, by removing reality from the diverse ways of being human that Italy has, and which Italy has produced in a historically very differentiated way.” To regard the manifold ways of being human beings as a resource, and not as a problem, could save us from contemporary conventionalism. It could induce us to seek and maybe find new lifestyles more in keeping with our time, beneficial to us and to others wising to share them. True, the rebirth briefly outlined here is not yet certified by guaranteed and positive economic indicators, genuinely higher employment, a crisis completely overcome and steady growth. But it is undoubtedly the clear symptom of a reversed tendency. Which is why we want to mention here the particular period which the city of Milan has been enjoying for some time now. In it a new history is under way, even though it all still has to be written, with a consciousness and awareness that to succeed means setting the whole country back in motion.

Domus magazine, too, is not going to miss this appointment. Indeed it intends to actively participate in the rebirth, with a small but significant concrete action to recount the themes and disciplines that we cover: design, architecture, art and their state today. To that end we approached a number of masters to undertake with them a journey that is, in a sense, free from various systems and conventions but also in some ways from the disciplines themselves. We are talking about the “Arch and Art” exhibition which, in the Triennale garden next to Muzio’s building and to De Chirico’s I bagni misteriosi, features five architectures, each containing a single work by one artist. The five constructions are all gathered around a central space to create a sort of Italian-style piazzetta. This is the true site of the whole design, an open and hospitable place. At the same time however, it is circumscribed and measured, capable of containing persons or even just holding the five works together. On this occasion the architects and artists worked hard to best and freely express the state of their arts and their crafts, their capacities and problems. Without portraying themselves, they confronted one another openly, each simply following their own principles. The sharp comparison always driven to the extreme between Chipperfield and Pistoletto, the maniacal search for a harmony of thought and form between Souto de Moura and Kounellis, the encounter-clash between two strong visions of their dominion between Kollhoff and Paladino, the perfect and magic game between De Lucchi and Cucchi, the refined coincidence of form between Venezia and Spalletti, all recount as many stories told for the occasion by these outstanding figures, to whom we are infinitely grateful for having agreed to join this adventure. The result of this action is intended to be our homage to the city of Milan, our gift to the particular period in which it is living. In the hope that the rebirth of which it is now the protagonist will not prove futile and temporary but will on the contrary be solid, lasting and contagious. Milan needs this, and so does Italy, and above so does our old Europe.

A gift to Milan

In May editorial Nicola Di Battista affirms that the Lombard capital is once again expressing a sentiment that can also be quickly transmitted to the ever-increasing numbers of people flocking to visit the numerous initiatives and the many cultural events offered by the city.

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