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For the 2024 edition, Domus returns to meet the people who make Milan Design Week come alive. Enthusiasts, the curious, experts, people living the seven-day-long radical transformation of their city, or people approaching it for the first time; everyone can participate to the walks that Domus is organizing on Wednesday, April 17, and Friday, April 19, to discover Milan in two of its most substantial aspects: the architecture of the modern city, providing the shape of Design Week landscapes, and its unseen places, represented by Villa Borsani in Varedo, home for this year to the Alcova cluster.
First walk
Milan in the 1950s. Portrait of a historic and “modern” city, from reconstruction to boom
This itinerary winds through the heart of the city center and intercepts some architectural symbols of a crucial moment for the definition of twentieth-century Milan: the “resurrection” from the voids of the unfinished plans and wartime destruction, the years in which Milanese society expressed knowledge and visions from which what we recognize today as a design ecosystem would take shape. Between San Babila, Corso Europa and Torre Velasca, between Magistretti, Caccia Dominioni, Arrighetti and BBPR, this walk dives into a city designed by local professionals, all of whom were interested in materializing Milanese “modernity”, but also in dialoguing with history.
Second walk
An escapade to where it all began.
Alcova, VIlla Bagatti Valsecchi and Villa Borsani
Villa Bagatti Valsecchi is the quintessential 19th-century Lombard villa, incorporating elements such as 15th-century columns salvaged from the demolition of Milanese Lazzaretto. Villa Borsani was built in Varedo during World War II and completed in 1945: it is a modernist architecture by Osvaldo Borsani, who conceived it as a residence adjacent to the family-owned furniture factory, ending up creating an eclectic masterpiece, which integrates different inspirations, languages and artistic contributions – let’s just mention a fireplace, which is made by Lucio Fontana. The program of Alcova for this year, renewing the focus on the relationship between content and container, between objects and unseen places in the city, will open a confrontation between eras, languages and visions of design, all to be discovered.
Opening image: Photo Alexandr Hovhannisyan from Unsplash