Nacho Carbonell: Memory, in practice

Spanish designer Nacho Carbonell (Valencia, 1980) transforms the MAXXI hall into a visionary landscape dominated by a striking seven-meter-tall tree. Beneath its branches, which are woven with fishing nets, an inhabitable space emerges. This welcoming environment is filled with objects and furnishings that allow visitors to pause, observe, and imagine.

Nacho Carbonell: Memory, in practice, curated by Martina Muzi, inaugurates the first edition of ENTRATE, a multi-year programme dedicated to design, launched by the Department of Architecture and Contemporary Design under the direction of Lorenza Baroncelli. At the core of Carbonell’s artistic practice is a recurring and intimate theme: personal memory. The designer’s creative process is characterised by an invisible thread that binds together the materials, gestures, and forms, drawing upon the natural landscapes of his childhood. For Carbonell, memory is not a static repository of recollections; rather, it is a dynamic instrument for design. This concept engages with reality, allows for deconstruction, and undergoes continuous regeneration. As with memory itself, which is layered with images and emotions, the artist’s creative process intertwines nature and artifice, handcraft and industrial fabrication, in a fluid dialogue between past and present, matter and vision.

Memory, in practice, is an evocative reconstruction of a space inspired by the places of Carbonell’s youth, spent between the garden of his family home and the sea surrounding Valencia. The architectural form is realised through the use of materials that evoke memory, employing experimental building techniques developed by the designer over time. The multifaceted world of Nacho Carbonell’s design enters MAXXI to demonstrate how design—rooted in personal memory and shaped by experimentation—can expand to generate new collective memories through use, function, and the stories of those who experience it.

Since 2023, MAXXI has expanded its field of research to encompass contemporary design, launching a new collection and becoming the first museum institution in Italy to adopt the most current forms and significant expressions of the discipline. Through ENTRATE, the Museum’s entrance hall is reimagined as a space of exchange and interaction between the Museum and the public, viewed through the lens of design. This multi-year program invites internationally renowned designers to develop site-specific projects rooted in their research, imagining new relationships between bodies, objects, and environments within the Museum’s threshold. Through immersive installations and storytelling through objects, design merges with the welcoming function of the hall, expanding both its meaning and the visitor experience. The museum entrance becomes an active threshold—a porous space that connects the urban exterior with the exhibition galleries and the spaces dedicated to study, creativity, and contemporary production.