Take Your Seat: ADI Design Museum at Supersalone

Since 1954, 34 chairs have been awarded the Compasso d’Oro prize and more than a hundred have received Honourable Mentions. To enhance this immense heritage – its inexhaustible archive of objects and stories – ADI Design Museum has commissioned architect and researcher Nina Bassoli to curate “Take Your Seat”, the exhibition representing the institution at the “supersalone”. Four of the five sections of the exhibition are in fact distributed among the pavilions of the fair, with the addition of an “extra” part inside the new museum.

Take your seat, Work learn produce, Cook set share, Going out: going public are the titles of the four main sections of the exhibition. Rather than focusing on furnishing typologies, on the technical and formal solutions of the object, Bassoli prefers to investigate human landscapes, rituals, behaviours, and some of the fundamental issues related to chairs and our time. For each chapter she has asked for the contribution of an architect or architect – Fosbury Architecture + AbNormal, Anna Puigjaner, Matilde Cassani, Davide Rapp – who with video installations explore the topics in a complementary way to the selection of chairs.

The set up, designed by Alessandro Colombo and Perla Gianni Falvo, succeeds in the complicated task of isolating visitors from the hustle and bustle of the “supersalone” and immersing them in a unified environment, without having to separate the exhibition space from the context of the fair. In each island of the exhibition, visitors can choose their own path and look at the masterpieces of Italian design with complete freedom.