La Triennale di Milano

La Triennale di Milano. La Collezione permanente. (2018)

La collezione permanente is the second of three volumes charting the history of the Triennale di Milano’s design collection. The La Triennale di Milano trilogy, launched in 2017 with Il Museo mutante, continues with a book featuring the Triennale’s Permanent collection, items from which are on display at the Museo del Design Italiano. Featuring artifacts that have helped write the history of Italian design, the Collection is much more than a series of works: it is a story, a narrative, an evocation of the past. For the objects that have accompanied our daily lives, entered our homes and shaped our domestic surroundings capture the history of us all. While they fall into highly diverse categories (from furnishings to lighting, chairs to office furniture), all the objects in the Triennale’s Permanent collection evoke the spirit of their times, reflecting the hopes and needs of the era in which they were designed and made.
The book illustrates the Collection and its individual objects, providing a uniquely invaluable repertoire on the stars of Italian design. Included in the second volume are forty accounts by artists whose work is held in the Collection. The interviews are unique for the fact they were carried out over the telephone. This lends an informal, spontaneous and “unscripted” tone to the texts. Completing the volume is a record of the works in the Triennale’s Collection, listed in chronological order. Eighty of these works are accompanied by a brief text exploring the concepts, history and materials behind them.