In 2016, after a twenty-year break, the International Exhibition of the Triennale di Milano comes back to life presenting “ROOMS. Novel living concepts” exhibition – entitled “STANZE”.

Curated by Beppe Finesi, the exhibition showcases the sophisticated, experimental and original work of a select group of practitioners who have been chosen to put forth their visions of what a room should be, encompass, and feel like.

Early exhibitions that explored this area have been: the ‘colours and shapes in today’s home’ exhibition at Villa Olmo, Como, in 1957; and the ‘la Casa Abitata’ exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 1965.

Then there was the seminal, groundbreaking MOMA exhibition, ‘Italy. the new domestic landscape’, New York, 1972, where there was no lack of projects for ‘interior environments’; and of course, one must not forget ‘the domestic project’ exhibition at the Triennale di Milano, in 1986.

A long time between exhibitions.

opening night at the Triennale di Milano 2016

Interior architecture is still the prime field of exploration, study and reflection in terms of its direct impact on people’s everyday lives. It is still a key driver for professionalism and for economies, there are few or almost no critical opportunities for putting the spotlight on these often extremely sophisticated and cultured (interior) architectural works.

Interior architects are ultimately responsible for designing the world around us. Today, there would appear to be an even greater need for reflection on the work carried out by a great many architects, masters and those no longer in the first flush of youth.

But, despite its importance, and the fact that it is a highly practiced trade, over the past 50 years this field has been critically undervalued as a sphere of design; and there have been very few occasions on which this theme and widespread profession has been acknowledged.

The Salone del Mobile, a place for experimentation, business, innovation and culture, has taken up the gauntlet: this exhibition is intended to underscore the particular remit of interior architecture and to provide a forward-looking vision of how living will evolve.

The exhibition opens by setting the historical scene in an area called ‘celestial vault’ showcasing significant accomplishments through photographs, models and drawings, carried out by a great many number of architects such as: Franco Albini, Carlo de Carli, Carlo Mollino, Gio Ponti, Carlo Scarpa, Vittoriano Viganò, Ettore Sottsass, Joe Colombo, Leonardo Savioli, Toni Cordero etc.

Projects by major twentieth century italian cultural players, such as: BBPR, Gae Aulenti, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Ignazio Gardella, Vittorio Gregotti, Vico Magistretti, Angelo Mangiarotti, Nanda Vigo, Marco Zanuso, etc. who, even if just on particular occasions, have conceived and realized housing concepts, will also be presented.

Visitors are able to walk through a series of rooms ‘STANZE’, each designed by a different contemporary architect who have all formulated their own rooms, each one influenced by different theories, philosophies, and literary works, to illustrate their ideas on the concept of living.

The philosophy of STANZE

The stanzas are the rooms of the heart, as Dante Alighieri said: “At that moment I say truly that the vital spirit, that which lives in the most secret chamber of the heart began to tremble…” (Vita Nuova).

With this in mind, a number of seminal books that trigger major reflection and debate where chosen, used to inform the eleven interior designers providing an overview of “The Domestic Project, 1986” (the last great exhibition on interiors).

They started with an introductory reference text that serves to inspire the ethos of the exhibition: Adam’s House in Paradise (1972), by the Anglo-Polish architectural historian and historian of ideas Joseph Rykwert.

Rykwert demonstrated that some of the great masters of modern architecture (such as Le Corbusier, Adolf Loos and Frank L. Wright) resorted, at crucial points in their careers, when introducing radical innovations, to a barely veiled mythology about the origins of building, perpetrating, as it were, the image of a first house, correct because it was the first, long gone yet remaining archetypical in our minds.

Stanze : The Contributors

Graphics: Leonardo Sonnoli

Layout: Gianni Filindeu

Each of the authors will formulate their own room concepts and philosopher Francesco M. Cataluccio has selected literary and philosophical reference texts for each project.

The Rooms

Resonances – Andrea Anastasio

The design for the room was triggered by reflecting on living spaces as places in which the many relational potentials for human beings coexist on a daily basis – the opportunities to affirm or deny the dimension of listening to oneself, to others and to the world, in particular.

The project is intended to give shape to a combination of polarities, identified by this reflection on the domestic space. Internal-external; microcosm-macrocosm; isolation-relationship; closed-open; dialogue-indifference; health-illness, etc.

The furnishing elements essential to daily life were identified – table-bed-container –, and then arranged inside the room so as to mark out two virtual axes, suggesting the intersection of two rooms. A semi-transparent curtain was hung across them, chopping them in half.

While substantially altering the furniture, splitting it did not preclude its functionality, while sharpening its symbolic/narrative properties.

Riva 1920 (main partner) Artemide, Campeggi, Barovier & Toso, Giuseppina Ciaccio, Edizioni Corraini, Danese, Galleria Luisa Delle Piane, MIPA, Francesco Lomanaco and Massimo Rioda

” The design for the room was triggered by reflecting on living spaces as places in which the many relational potentials for human beings coexist on a daily basis – the opportunities to affirm or deny the dimension of listening to oneself, to others and to the world, in particular. the project is intended to give shape to a combination of polarities, identified by this reflection on the domestic space. internal-external; microcosm-macrocosm; isolation-relationship; closed-open; dialogue-indifference; health-illness, etc.

The furnishing elements essential to daily life were identified – table-bed-container –, and then arranged inside the room so as to mark out two virtual axes, suggesting the intersection of two rooms.

A semi-transparent curtain was hung across them, chopping them in half. while substantially altering the furniture, splitting it did not preclude its functionality, while sharpening its symbolic/narrative properties.” ….. Anastio

The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1988), by Gilles Deleuze, one of the shrewdest European philosophers of the second half of the twentieth-century, revolutionised the way in which architecture and Baroque culture was interpreted, amongst other things: everything folds in on itself, unfolds, refolds, representing the darkest sides of the soul.

The infinite repetition of the folds, their incessant self-stratification, continues to create new harmonies to this day. Andrea Anastasio, identified the furnishing elements essential to daily life (table, bed, container) before arranging them inside the room so as to mark out two virtual axes, suggesting the folding over of two rooms.

A semi-transparent curtain was hung across them, chopping them in half, ruffling the walls with a blast of air

Round and Round – Manolo De Giorgi

Room equals being present, but are we sure about all this being present?

Are we still convinced that this, more than any other dimension, represents living? Or wouldn’t a potential new melange be more realistic, combining being present + utilising services + moving about, all in more or less identical proportions?

I thought about habitation as guided by the spaces dedicated to movement, strips lined up against each other to form an environment dictated by “ongoing operations”.

A summation of corridors that ought to produce a continuous, fluid space, dispensing with the rigid, tile-like juxtaposition of rooms. It is not the room that “contains” the functions, but the distribution of spaces that “serve” the functions.

Poliform (main partner) Cristina, Electrolux, Scarabeo, Steel Color

” Room equals occupying, but are we sure about all this occupying? are we still convinced that this occupying should act as a protagonist for inhabiting, over and above any other factor? or would a potential new melange not be more realistic, one that combines occupying+utilizing services+moving about, all in more or less identical proportions?

I tried to conceive a habitat guided by spaces dedicated to movement, 80 cm strips lined up against each other to form an environment dictated by ‘ongoing operations’. a summation of corridors that ought to result in a continuously flowing space, dispensing with the rigid tile-like juxtaposition of rooms.

I thought about the great opportunities offered up by corridors: those indeterminate spaces in which functions are sped up, ‘stripped’ to some degree, cross-contaminated, short-lived, ‘jokes’, almost, and then, ultimately, spaces ripe for opportunities and small places of freedom.”  …… De Girorgio

The Polish psychologist Zygmunt Bauman is one of the most radical and popular critics of the contemporary world. Perhaps his most famous book is Liquid Modernity (2000).

The metaphor of liquidity, coined by Bauman, examines the current era: individualised, privatised, uncertain, flexible and vulnerable, in which unprecedented freedom acts as a counterpoint to ambiguous pleasure and impossible, insatiable desire.

The space conceived by Manolo De Giorgio is “liquid”: split into a series of corridors, like diagonal “strips”, freeing up movement between the various functions of a home, liquefying the different rooms into a single flow that almost inhibits them from staying put in a set place.

Ursus – Duilio Forte

Ursus was created as an opportunity to try out a minimal habitative experience inside a zoomorphic shape.

The bear is an animal associated with northern nature, where he lives in the forest or on sheets of Arctic ice.

The monumental size of the structure means that every single part of the work is inhabitable.

The head/entrance consists of a sauna. The purification of the mind and body make way for the main room, the body.

The first part of the inside of the body is split into two levels, two small bathrooms below and a bed above.

The central space, full height, is the convivial area. A long table in the centre, a kitchen.

The interior is colonised by a great many objects, sculptures, books and pictures connected with the Scandinavian world, mythology and travel. Ursus, Fafnir, Hugmun, Sleipnir, Convivalis II, Huginn, Huginn & Munin are just some of the works that populate the Great Bear.

You can wriggle out of one of its paws and feel at one with the surrounding nature.

Rimadesio (main partner) Atelier Forte, Azzurra, Effegibi, Electrolux, Fabscarte, Bolesławiec Manufakture, MGS, Temporary Bookstore, Tideo

“this project comes under the heading of ‘domestic landscape’ according to the principles of the arkizoic manifesto. ‘On 12th february 2009, the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, atelierforte laid down the principles of arkizoic style in a manifesto based on a set of seven rules inspired by the geological eras, thus underscoring temporal continuity with the phanerozoic era, the aeon in which life on earth was explosively affirmed.”

There are five particular fundamental points:
i. put your soul into your work
ii. use natural and traditional shapes
iii. use drawing as an emotional sketch
iv. adopt heuristic methods
v. leave room for chance, error and the incomplete

The design is a proposal for contemporary living, made possible by the speeding up of communication today. the size of the social group is determined by the ability to maintain personal connections. monkeys, for example, manage to make up groups of up to 30 individuals.

Language has enabled social groups of up to 150 people to be formed. the computer revolution has now overturned this threshold, obviating the need for proximity, such as the social habits of primates and the traditional verbal language of human beings. It will enable society to break apart and fragment. faced with a rapidly fragmenting society, we have come up with a minimal survival module on which to base our visions of our own future. A centrifugal force to counter the progressive abandonment of the planet, in which 50% of its inhabitants now occupies 1% of the earth.’…..   Forte

DUILIO FORTE sees architecture primarily as a highly skilled and imaginative practice. His house, which grew over the years like a termite mound of original and wacky objects and solutions, all built with his own hands, is the synthesis of his creative fantasy.

His project absolutely had to be associated with the books that have re-evaluated the craftsmanship aspect of homo faber, even from a highly technological perspective, such as 3D printing which enables all kinds of products to be designed and manufactured at a distance: Richard Sennet, The Craftsman (2008) – and also Stefano Micelli, Futuro Artigiano (2011); and Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution (2012).

The Absence of Presence – Marta Laudani e Marco Romanelli

When organising internal spaces our time is spent debating alternative dichotomies between revealing and concealing, or rather between presence and absence, and between “gymnasium” and “stage set”.

Homes are not merely machines à habiter, but stages for our daily lives.

This duality conceals the “raw nerve” of 21st century design.

Machines à habiter actually make for perfect distribution, carefully evaluated climate conditions and generous fixed furnishing systems.

“Stages for daily life” serve to show off objects and materials that testify how far we have come financially and culturally: from large screen televisions to original paintings, from large amounts of books to elegant drawing rooms still protected with plastic, from hydromassage tubs to brass-effect finishings, from hyper-technological kitchens to mega sofas.

People throughout the ages have attributed specific “powers of representation” to different and particular objects. This therefore means that when tackling a design for a “novel living concept”, the value of “absences” needs to be analysed. It is no longer simply a matter of modifying the “presences” in terms of taste and culture, but of building a room to be lived as an “absence” (an empty space for coming and going and contemplating works of art).

The “presence” will return, transformed into experiences for “lone” activation within well-defined areas, earmarked for individual human activities: reading a book, getting undressed or eating.

This is a project that does not simply aesthetically valorise the concept of emptiness, but is driven by different “contemporary family” structures. Families made up of individuals all of whom have reached adulthood but who, out of necessity, continue to live together, or unrelated people required to share a space, for instance.

Within these nuclei, each person needs to create their own intimacy, their own story, their own “one-man tent”.

Antolini (main partner) 0.0 Flat Floor, Flos, Galleria Roberta Lietti, JAB Anstoetz, Oluce, 3D Surface of Art

” When organizing internal spaces our time is spent debating alternative dichotomies between revealing and concealing, or rather between presence and absence, and between ‘gymnasium’ and ‘stage set’.

Homes are not merely machines à habiter, but stages on which our daily lives are played out.

This duality conceals the ‘raw nerve’ of twenty-first century design. machines à habiter actually makes for perfect distribution, carefully evaluated climate conditions and generous fixed furnishing systems.

‘stages for daily life’ serves to show off objects and materials that demonstrate how far we have come financially and culturally: from large screen televisions to original paintings, from large amounts of books to elegant drawing rooms still covered with plastic, from hydromassage tubs to brass-effect finishings, from hyper-technological kitchens to mega sofas. people throughout the ages have attributed specific ‘powers of representation’ to different and particular objects.

This therefore means that when tackling a design for a ‘novel living concept, the value of ‘absences’ needs to be explored. It is no longer simply a matter of modifying the ‘presences’ in terms of taste and culture, but of building a room to be lived as an ‘absence’ (an empty space for coming and going and for contemplating works of art). The ‘presence’ will return, transformed into experiences for “lone” activation within well-defined areas, earmarked for different human activities: reading a book, getting undressed or eating.

This is a project that does not simply aesthetically valorize the concept of emptiness, but is driven by different ‘contemporary family’ structures. Families made up of individuals all of whom have reached adulthood but who, out of necessity, continue to live together, or unrelated people required to share a space, for instance. within these nuclei, each person needs to create their own intimacy, their own story, their own ‘oneman tent’.” … Laudini & Romanelli

Next was a difficult but hugely successful book, structured in a somewhat unusual and metaphorical way: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979), by the American Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Informatics Douglas R. Hofstandter.

It is a meditation on the human mind through artificial intelligence, which shows that the future consists of hybrid models, with no preconceived ideology, models drawn from several different disciplines, in other words, in the greatest and purest interaction between different sciences and forms of knowledge.

We chose this book to inform the project by Marta Laudani and Marco Romaenelli, a “scattered distribution” inside a space, playing on the absence of presence and underscoring the connection between hiding and revealing.

La vie en rose – Claudio Lazzarini & Carl Pickering

Sheets of glass ranging from pink to claret define the walls of a minimalist habitative cell that explores the technical, aesthetic and ethical possibilities thrown up by the new solar technologies.

Surfaces screen-printed with special pink, organic and hybrid photovoltaic ink produce energy when exposed to direct, indirect and artificial light sources, triggering a virtuous circle of energy consumption and production.

Thirty-three internal square metres and twelve metres of loggia/greenhouse encompass all the residential functions required by a couple looking from the contemporary to the future, bringing elements of memory with them.

The loggia/greenhouse, a mediation space between the interior and exterior, controls the air conditioning and energy production and hosts plants and domestic utilities.

A central plan, covered by a vault, is enclosed by a perimeter of server spaces and solar panels, which open as required, altering the space like theatrical scenery.

The furnishings meld with the fixtures, the fixtures become furnishings and everything becomes transformed.

The habitative cells duplicate and join together to generate architecture and landscapes that aspire to energy self-sufficiency.

Secco (main partner) Acierno, Altai, Artopia, Barovier & Toso, Bitossi Ceramiche, Extendo, Flos, Gallery Apart, Intentions, Kvadrat, Marta Sala Éditions, Molteni, Zanotta

During the early 1980s, debate around the crisis of the Western paradigm of explaining and attempting to order reality and the theme of challenging complexity was hugely important in Italy, and led to greater awareness of the unsustainability of hitherto prevailing ideologies and the need to build new theoretical pathways.

It was at that point that the inevitable result of the Crisis of Reason, which for some was a good thing, was dubbed “weak thought”.

Of the many books published at the time, we chose a work by several different authors: Gargani, Ginzburg, Lepschy, Orlando, Rella, Strada, Bodei, Badaloni, Veca, Viano, Crisi della Ragione. Nuovi Modelli nel Rapporto tra Saperi e Attività Umane, ed. by Aldo Gargani, 1979 (and also the contemporary works Il Pensiero Debole, 1983, ed. by Gianni Vattimo and Pier Aldo Rovatti, and La Sfida della Complessità, 2007, by Gianluca Bocchi and Mauro Ceruti).

We thought these works would be useful for the project by Claudio Lazzarini and Carl Pickering, in which sheets of coloured glass define the walls of a minimalist habitative cell that explores the technical, aesthetic and ethical potential of the new photovoltaic technologies: reducing traditional elements to the essential and building new, more sustainable, pathways.

D1 – Francesco Librizzi

D1 is a room that spells out the discovery of the domestic space. In an elliptical space formed by concentric rows of coloured narrow metal columns, the viewer gradually sees the threshold between interior and exterior become defined and include the role of the architecture in the mediation between landscape, domestic space and objects.

The concept is drawn from a fascinating experience of hospitality in several private interior spaces in Beirut and illustrates a timeless way of living, rooted in the collective memory of the entire Mediterranean basin.

An empty space positioned in the centre that acts as the cornerstone for a series of satellite spaces orbiting around it: the home and the city we can all remember or imagine.

D1 leverages the mythical imagination of an original moment in which, for the first time, a person has paused because they are fascinated by the quality of a place and decides to stay there.

In this sense D1 is the “person’s first room”, the place we identify with and in which we became conscious that we were nomads no longer; that place at the centre of everything, where we take the things we pick up along the way and around which we build our home.

D1 is a project that represents the threshold that divides nature, across which the space ceases to be wild and becomes domestic.

Partners De Castelli, Emmemobili, Zanotta (main partner)

The room designed by Francesco Librizzi features an empty central space, as found in many traditional Mediterranean buildings: a space that comes both before and after the other spaces.

Its architecture creates a border and generates an area that defines the “open” central space; it is a narration of the historic elements of interior architecture, pared right down to the essentials.

Precisely because, in this case, the narration of the space is very important, it is associated with Making Stories (2002) by the American cultural psychologist Jerome Bruner.

His thesis is that we are the narration of ourselves: the impulse to create stories, about ourselves and about others, about what we have experienced and what we will live through, is what has brought us into the world.

My Prisons – Alessandro Mendini

Abet Laminati (main partner)

” For a long time, forever in fact, I have felt as though I were living shut inside a prison. Serving a life sentence for the crime of “ornamentation”.

I find myself in an introverted room, a blockaded perimeter, an insurmountable mental space. Small yet also enormous, completely confined, in any event. My ideas, my style, my atmosphere, my mirage: everything is in there. It is the isolation cell inside a romantic and privileged Alcatraz.

Imprisoned by nightmares, by torture, by hallucinations, by the abyss of decoration. It’s like the methodical self-building of walls and surfaces destined to deny me my freedom.

I often think about ABET laminate. It was the first material I fell in love with. Cold, flat, high-tech, geometrical, amorphous yet erotic, up for anything, prepared to lose and make me lose our purity. My conventions, my desires have smoothed it, painted it, stroked it, illuminated it, polished it and softened it.

Laminate seduced me so completely that it must have been the source of the decorative obsession with infinite signs, styles and colours that wrapped me ever more firmly inside the cocoon of my sins, my terrible thirst for ornamentation.

If I try to locate the true, distant beginning of my design life sentence, of my prisons, I find it in the emptiness of the drawings produced by hand or on the computer, above the superficiality of the surfaces, not in the depth of space and form.”  …….. Mendini

The room designed by Alessandro Mendini is a sort of “prison” with geometrically decorated laminate walls.

The middle of each decoration features a mirror or light source. Aside from its ironic feeling of constriction, the fact that the design of all six is the same would appear to confirm the theories expressed by the American critic Rosalind Krauss, in The Optical Unconscious (1993), the story of an indomitable and irrepressible visual power known as the “optical unconscious” brought to bear on twentieth-century art as a whole.

INTRO – Fabio Novembre

Natuzzi (main partner)

‘If you think about it, an egg is like a solidified uterus, and the apparent great difference between oviparous and viviparous species is simply a matter of the consistency of the outer membrane. if we then tried to plunder our remotest amniotic memories, it would be easy to show that our earliest perception of space occurred while we were floating about in the warm hollow of an ovoid form and that every concept of domesticity is geared to recreating that condition.

However, unlike the gestational sac, the egg retains its formal and aesthetic dignity even after it has carried out its function. perhaps this is why mankind has always been fascinated by its shape, and why all its vital potential has always been associated with the idea of perfection. art has celebrated its iconic value, and architecture – especially in the endeavour to predict the future – has seen its ovoid shape as the perfect formal synthesis.

I tried to imagine a bedroom made of leather with high-end saddlery fittings inside a chrome eggshell. the ovoid shape and its reflective power are selling points, and the colour and warmth of the leather literally engulf the visitor, who finds himself inside himself, looking out from within.

Let us not forget that sleep is the space-time threshold that carries us back to our original amniotic immersion by night, yet compels us to be reborn each day, more human and more sentient than ever.”  ….  Novembre

The famous novel by Czech writer Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) informs FABIO NOVEMBRE’s project. Existence and the short and long-term choices we all make are totally irrelevant, according to Kundera: this is where their unbearableness resides.

The only thing man should be able to say about existence, in order to give it meaning, is that it is a Necessity.

Not by chance the novel opens with a reflection on the “Eternal Recurrence”, which represents the desire to impress Necessities on our lives. Novembre’s room is a kind of head, which of necessity and ironically carries architecture over into the shapes of the body and the room into to the head, with its perfectly habitable cavities.

Lift-Bit – Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA)

In its dedicated Room at the Triennale di Milano, Carlo Ratti Associati presents Lift-Bit, the world’s first Internet-connected sofa.

The design, put together with the support of Vitra, consists of an upholstered modular and reconfigurable seat, which leverages Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology, making for a new living experience.

The Lift-Bit prototype is built on a combination of a series of individual stools, each of which contains a linear drive that enables the seats to be raised or lowered.

Remotely controlled by an app, each stool can double or halve in height, reconfiguring the space in a potentially infinite number of new combinations.

A homage to Cedric Price’s Generator Project, Lift-Bit’s responsive module adapts to suit the user’s requirements, becoming an armchair, a bed, an orderly sitting room, a small auditorium or a domestic landscape.

Vitra (main partner) Opendot (engineering and interaction design)

‘‘Pin room’ is a personalized working, playing, talking and sleeping space. a responsive module that changes according to need, becoming an office, a lounge, a bed, an orderly sitting room, a small auditorium or a domestic landscape.

The starting point is a flat surface, made up of soft pins, that can rise up in response to a simple hand movement, and reconfigure the space in a potentially infinite number of combinations. each of its components – pixels turned matter – allow us to literally manipulate the physical universe and transform it, each time, into the best of all possible tangible worlds.

Like Mark Weisler’s ubiquitous computing utopia, we inhabit the spaces – made up of bits and atoms – like habitative interfaces, to which we can give shape through the simplest of interactions.’” …… Ratti

Lastly, perhaps the sharpest thinking about the current situation, engulfed by digital swarming, comes from the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who has been living, teaching and writing in Germany for many years. In his book Swarming. Aspects of the Digital (2013), he shows how transparency and digital devices have profoundly changed people and their way of thinking.

His critique discusses what it means to relinquish meaning and good sense in favour of readily available, but often unreliable information. It sounds a much-needed alarm bell over the need for awareness of both the advantages and disadvantages of using the new technologies.

The Carlo Ratti Associati practice has designed a space that shows off technology at its most practical: a platform of soft pins that can rise up and reconfigure the space in a potentially infinite number of combinations. Each of its components (pixels turned matter) allows us to literally manipulate the physical universe and transform it, each time into the “best of all possible tangible worlds.”

La petite chambre – Umberto Riva

The idea of rethinking the Cabanon, the bolt hole built by Le Corbusier on the Côte d’Azur 1952, becomes a pretext for a reflection on the amount of space man effectively needs.

A long way from the sea, this is a long-distance dialogue, respectful yet also critical: while Corbusier designed it according to the Modulor, Riva relies on the safety of logic, opting for an empirical interrogation of the “primordial” elements of the domestic environment.

This Milanese chambre also measures approximately 16 m2 and is rectangular, but its regularity is disrupted by two “branchiae” that contrive an unexpected interchange with the outdoors.

In order to avoid the promiscuity of the Cabanon – where the WC is near the bed – the bathroom is in an independent, organically shaped unit.

The furnishings are in birch, made to measure: the bed replicates that of Corbu with the headboard, the tables accentuate the diagonality of the space and the lamps were designed by Riva in the 1970s.

It is completely encompassed by a wooden structure, covered with cedarwood shingles.

Mattiazzi (main partner) Leap, Dormiflex

“‘This is a proposal for a place in which to isolate oneself. my thoughts immediately flew to the cabanon designed by le corbusier in a pine forest on the cote d’azur where he spent the summer months during the latter part of his life. the project consists of a small completely self-sufficient room (13m2), in which the spaces and utilities have been pared down to a minimum. an exploration of existenz minimum, in which the relationship between the person and the internal space is the most important and delicate consideration of all. a room of monastic rigour, in which the light, the materials and the design of the furnishings assume the most important role.‘ …. Riva

In designing a sort of modern Cabanon (Le Corbusier’s final retreat), Umberto Riva explores Existenz Minimum, in which the relationship between the person and the internal space is the most important and delicate factor of all.

A room of monastic rigour, in which the light, the materials and the design of the furnishings assume the most important role.

The ideal place to practice the art of disappearing, as theorised by the French philosopher Pierre Zaoui in La Discrétion ou l’Art de Disparaître (2013). Discretion, the new face of Modernity, is the art of disappearing, the art of subtraction: not in an attempt to deny, but to affirm oneself and, at the same time, to make what defines us disappear.

Putting in things into Perspective – Elisabetta Terragni

A design for a room like a microcosm for living and thinking in, into which everything is slowly filtered and distills.

A room that will never be lived in, but which declares its intimacy in the form of absence, of emptiness. A more or less closed paralleliped; inside the spaces hide and gently mutate in two perspectives: one along the visual axis of the entrance, almost inevitable, the other more private, unwinding along the transverse axis.

The perspectival deformation creates a different perception of space, almost imperceptible and at times more marked, sufficiently to make us think.

Occupying the resulting spaces between the interior and exterior walls, margins and gaps open and close in a ever-changing perspectival play, generated by light and the movements of the observer.

An ethereal image fragments against the walls and becomes whole again from one single viewpoint that the observer can only find by moving around. Fragments of light and space can be glimpsed by peeping through the windows, but can only be reconstructed by going inside.

Ideally, two individuals inhabit it, they are close, but can also not see each other, almost miss each other, although they can communicate with and hear each other.

MDF Italia (main partner) Artemide

” Taking away rather than adding to means recognizing the essence of things and communicating them in their essentiality.’ – bruno munari

” Max Ernst’s watercolour ‘das schlafzimmer des meisters – es lohnt sich darin eine nacht zu verbringen’ (the master’s bedroom, it’s worth spending a night there), painted in 1920, draws us into the theme of the room with a deceptive ploy, demanding curiosity and respect. the outside is a closed parallelepiped, inside the spaces hide and gently mutate in two perspectives. the perception of space changes, not by much, but enough to make us think. occupying the resulting spaces between the interior and exterior walls, margins and gaps open and close in a constantly changing perspectival play, generated by light and the movements of the viewer. an ethereal image fragments against the walls and becomes whole again from one single viewpoint that the viewer has to seek out by moving around. two individuals inhabit it, they are close, but can also not see each other, almost miss each other, although they can communicate and hear each other. as in haruki murakami’s books, two is the magic number, a double life, an unconscious whole yet split in two, two people and also two moons. a parallel world, just slightly different, in an altered perspective.”  ……. Terragni

Elisabetta Terragni, has drawn on an almost archetypal painting by Max Ernst from 1920 for her concept. Working from an old schoolbook image, Ernst took away almost everything, but left the figures of the animals in their original positions, achieving a truly surreal effect.

Taking away rather than adding to seems to be a necessary process for underscoring the essential: the ghosts that remain and take on the permanent value of expressing feelings.

This is the modus operandi adopted by the German art historian Aby Warburg, rediscovered at the end of the twentieth-century, whose theories are now considered fundamental to an anthropological reading of images, as discussed by the French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman in L’Image Survivante. Histoire de l’Art et Temps des Fantômes Selon Aby Warburg (2002).

The XXI Triennale is a Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) recognised exhibition.

The Salone del Mobile.Milano was one of the first to take part in the project consolidating the front line role of FederlegnoArredo in the Italian home furnishing sector, and its championing of the Italian System, along with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Triennale di Milano and Confindustria.

Triennale di Milano – April 2 to September 12, 2016

La Triennale di Milano is a design and art museum in the Parco Sempione in Milan. It is housed in the Palazzo dell’Arte, which was designed by Giovanni Muzio and built between 1931 and 1933; construction was financed by Antonio Bernocchi and his brothers Andrea and Michele

The museum hosts exhibitions and events which highlight contemporary Italian design, urban planning, architecture, music, and media arts, emphasizing the relationship between art and industry.

The Triennal Museum houses the Collezione Permanente, a collection of significant objects in contemporary Italian design.

The museum has been the venue for La Triennale di Milano (“the Milan triennial exhibition”). Recognized by the Bureau of International Expositions, this major exhibition has been held thirteen times so far, the latest one in 1996.

After twenty years, the Triennale International Exhibition makes a comeback.

Map of all the Triennale events held around Milna in 2016