Achille Castiglioni: A Castiglioni

Celebrating the centenary of his birth, La Triennale di Milano is devoting a major monographic exhibition to Achille Castiglioni (1918–2002), one of the most important masters of Italian design, curated by by Patricia Urquiola in collaboration with Federica Sala. The exhibition examines Castiglioni’s work in a transversal manner, ranging from design to architecture through to exhibition displays. The curation and installation is entrusted to Patricia Urquiola, an architect and designer who not only made her first steps together with Castiglioni (she graduated under him at the Politecnico University of Milan in 1989), but also took up both his legacy and his ability to surprise through design.

Achille Castiglioni was undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of the profession and of the Italian design system. His legacy is kept very much alive today by the Fondazione Achille Castiglioni—in the historic studio in Piazza Castello—dedicated to catalog, sort, archive, digitize projects, drawings, photos, models, videos: the whole world of Achille Castiglioni, in which he has worked during more than 60 years of activity, first with the brothers Livio and Pier Giacomo, then, since 1968, alone.

In addition to the important contribution of the Fondazione Achille Castiglioni, CSAC Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Parma, Fondazione ADI Compasso d’Oro, Museo Alessi, Museo Kartell, MUMAC Museo della Macchina per Caffè di Gruppo Cimbali, Fondazione Pio Manzù – Fondazione Manzoni Arte e Design Bergamo, Sony Design and the archives of Flos, Cassina, De Padova, Zanotta, B&B Italia, CASVA gli archivi del progetto a Milano, Caccia Dominioni, Giovanni Sacchi, Ugo Mulas, Cesare Colombo have helped make the exhibition at La Triennale possible.

Castiglioni’s approach is simple and direct but with a wealth of inquisitiveness and irony, and it became the method he used to train later generations of designers.The items he designed—most of which are still in production today, and among their manufacturers’ bestselling products—take inspiration from the everyday world and transform it into something new, adopting a wry approach to the relationship between form and function.

Achille Castiglioni designed over 400 temporary display installations for exhibitions and fairs and worked with countless companies in the sector, including Alessi, Brionvega, B&B Italia, BBB Bonacina, Cimbali, Danese, Driade, De Padova, Flos—for which he worked as a designer from the moment the company was founded—Cassina, Moroso, Knoll International, Kartell, and Zanotta.

Until 1968, he designed his items in collaboration with his brothers Livio and, especially, Pier Giacomo. Most of them are still in production today and are among their manufacturers’ bestselling products. They take inspiration from the everyday world and transform it into something new, adopting a wry approach to the relationship between form and function.

To give a clear picture of this highly active and, in a sense, timeless figure, it has been decided not to adopt a chronological or schematic approach but to show his work by means of a series of often overlapping and intersecting aggregates of content. The idea is thus to create a map of recurrent macro and micro concepts in his designs, in a non-hierarchic, non-linear, ramified manner.

The designs are thus grouped in 20 clusters and placed in relation to each other, in order to illustrate Castiglioni’s approach to design and the method he adopted in his work: from product design through to large-scale architecture, by way of the many display designs that were emblematic of his professional career.