Triennale Milano pays tribute to architect and designer Angelo Mangiarotti. With the participation of Renzo Piano

From January 27 to April 23, 2023, Triennale Milano pays tribute to Milanese architect and designer Angelo Mangiarotti (1921-2012) with the exhibition Angelo Mangiarotti. When Structures Take Form, curated by Fulvio Irace, with Francesca Albani, Franz Graf (architecture section), Luca Pietro Nicoletti (sculpture section), Marco Sammicheli (design section), and with support from Giulio Barazzetta. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Angelo Mangiarotti Foundation, which has made its archives available. The exhibition design is by Ottavio Di Blasi & Partners, with the participation of Renzo Piano.

The exhibition aims to be one of the most comprehensive and exhaustive retrospectives ever held on the figure of the Milanese architect, retracing more than 60 years of activity through a wide selection of works, projects, documents and materials, many of which have never been exhibited before.

“Triennale Milano has been carrying out for years an itinerary dedicated to the great Italian masters of design, from Enzo Mari to Ettore Sottsass, from Achille Castiglioni to Pietro Lingeri. These names are now joined by Angelo Mangiarotti, a multifaceted and international personality who over the years has witnessed excellent experimentation in the fields of architecture, design, sculpture and infrastructure design,” said Stefano Boeri, president of Triennale Milano. “The retrospective is therefore intended to restore the proper historical importance to a central figure in the design culture of the 20th century. We are particularly grateful to Renzo Piano, who was a pupil of Mangiarotti and worked with Mangiarotti right here at Triennale in 1968 for the 14th International Exhibition, for participating in this important project.”

"Angelo Mangiarotti is an indispensable figure in Italian design andarchitecture. Some of his projects, including the 4D cabinet (UniFor EMME3 /Molteni&C, 1966), the IN 301 armchair (Zanotta, 1969), and the Giogali chandelier (Vistosi, 1967), are part of Triennale’s permanent collection," said Marco Sammicheli, director of the Museum of Italian Design at Triennale Milano. “This exhibition is a further step in the path started in October 2021 with the study day organized on the centenary of Mangiarotti’s birth, to enhance the author’s work also in relation to the influence he exerted in Japan, the United States and Europe.”

For Fulvio Irace, curator of the exhibition, “the exhibition at the Triennale is the first opportunity to restore to the figure of the great master the complexity that has long been removed from his reputation as a builder attentive to the process of material culture and prefabrication techniques. While it is indeed true that Mangiarotti has, so to speak, reinvented the eternal archetype of the beam and the pillar, declining it throughout his life in an astonishing range of variations, it is equally undoubted, as precisely the exhibition highlights, that his work contains an expressive vein of great plastic and sculptural power, which places him in the domain of art as well as architecture and design.”

The exhibition design features the participation of Renzo Piano, who got to know Mangiarotti during his Milanese years at the Polytechnic and the 14th Triennale (1968), and is intended to pay tribute to the timely way of framing the theme of space, which characterizes the works of the great Milanese architect. The installation design developed by Ottavio Di Blasi & Partners consists of a series of platforms that house the thematic cores of the exhibition: from the knot to the joint, from sculpture to assemblage, from abstraction to sensuality. Each table presents a set of study models, prototypes, realizations, and work fragments, restoring to the visitor Mangiarotti’s experimental richness and the workshop atmosphere of his atelier.

The exhibition aims to focus on Mangiarotti’s aptitude for tackling each individual design problem within a much broader global vision, in which experimentation, material characteristics and static functions go far beyond the laws of structure, through experimentation with materials such as concrete, marble and glass.

The exhibition route kicks off from the large entrance hallway, along whose left wall runs a timeline, inspired by the characteristic atmosphere of the architect’s studio: a long, colorful wall where images and drawings of his major projects are clustered and arranged to illustrate his composite creative universe. On the opposite wall, a picture gallery deploys a thick series of drawings by the architect’s hand, illustrating his great expressive capacity and the value of drawing in his ideational process. Upon entering the room, the viewer is attracted by large prints of off-scale photographs that capture various details, both interior and exterior, of his projects, lowering him within a path that illustrates the main themes of his incessant research. Without forced divisions between disciplinary boundaries, one thus has the opportunity to perceive the continuity of certain formal themes that lace up and resume at different times and at different scales, like recurring sounds in a complex musical text. If in the large tables are arranged original materials from the archives-documents, drawings, photos and maquettes-all around stretches a landscape from which sculptural presences emerge powerfully, bearing witness to the profound artistic vein that characterized his entire life.

In a special room there will also be a screening of the video Un Angelo su Milano: Mangiarotti e la città, made for the exhibition by Francesca Molteni, Muse Factory of Project.

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog, edited by Fulvio Irace and published by Electa (in Italian and English), with contributions by critics and experts, including essays by Francesca Albani, Giulio Barazzetta, François Burkhardt, Franz Graf, Luca Pietro Nicoletti, and Marco Sammicheli; focuses on specific themes by Luisa Boccheitto, Tullia Iori, Beppe Finessi, Motomi Kawakami, Valentina Marchetti, Marco Ragone, Toshihiko Suzuki; testimonies by Enrico Bona, Martino Gamper, Renzo Piano, Alberto Vintani; and a photographic reportage by Filippo Romano.
In addition to the catalog, the exhibition is accompanied by a podcast, edited by Carlo Pastore and Giorgio Terruzzi, a thematic album on Mangiarotti’s Milanese architecture, and an illustrated guide for children.

On the occasion of the exhibition, Triennale Milano is also organizing a series of tours for the public dedicated to discovering the main projects carried out by Angelo Mangiarotti in the city of Milan during his career.

During the opening period of the exhibition at Triennale, the Milan Polytechnic will also dedicate an exhibition to the Milanese architect and designer: Angelo Mangiarotti and Polytechnic Culture, which will run from March 28 to May 30, 2023.

The exhibition is made possible thanks to Institutional Partners Lavazza Group and Salone del Mobile.Milano, Technical Partner ATM, and Technical Sponsors UniFor and Vetreria Vistosi.

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Full ticket 12 euros, reduced 10 euros, students 6 euros. Single ticket to visit all Triennale Milano exhibitions 13 euros.

Photo credit: Melania Dalle Grave, DSL Studio.

Triennale Milano pays tribute to architect and designer Angelo Mangiarotti. With the participation of Renzo Piano

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