TREDICESIMA TRIENNALE DI MILANO
Pasquale Morino and Leonello Pica [Editors],
Massimo Vignelli [Designer]
Pasquale Morino and Leonello Pica [Editors], Massimo Vignelli [Designer]: TREDICESIMA TRIENNALE DI MILANO [Tempo libero: Esposizione internazionale delle arti decorative e industriali moderne e dell'architettura moderna 12 giugno - 27 settembre 1964]. Milan: Arti Grafiche Crespi, August 1964. First edition. Parallel text in Italian, French and English. Oblong quarto. Silver cloth debossed and decorated in black. Printed gray endpapers. 202 [ lxviii] pp. 217 black and white photographs, diagrams and floorplans. Index. Elaborate graphic design throughout by Massimo Vignelli. Silve cloth lightly rubbed and glossy white pages uniformly sunned to edges, otherwise a nearly fine copy.
12 x 8.5 hardcover book with 202 pages with 217 black and white illustrations followed by 68 pages of period Italian advertisements. Includes an introductory essay by Umberto Eco and Vittorio Gregotti. This volume is the comprehensive published record of the 1964 Milan Triennale Exposition and features illustrated profiles of the exhibitions designed by France, the United States, Mexico, Belgium Finland, Brazil, Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria, Great Britain, Holland, Switzerland, Canada, and Italy.
The Milan Triennial Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Modern Architecture (La Triennale di Milano) was established in Monza in 1923 as the first Biennial of Decorative Arts. The Biennial outgrew its place as a regional showcase and developed an international standing after becoming a triennial in 1930. Created as a showcase for modern decorative and industrial arts, with the aim of stimulating relations among the industry, production sectors and applied arts, La Triennale di Milano became the main Italian event for promoting architecture, visual and decorative arts, design, fashion and audio/video production. Since 1933 the Triennale has been located in Milan in the Palazzo dell’Arte.
The Triennali of the 1950s and 1960s generated critical attention and fierce debate until 1968 when the 14th Triennale was brought to an early end by student demonstrators. This manifestation of the volatility of political and social events in many ways echoed the increasingly fragile complexities of the Italian design world. Thereafter the Triennali ceased to play such a central role in design research, rhetoric, and relevance.
Milan Triennial Exhibitions recognized by the BIE took place in: 1933, 1936, 1940, 1947, 1951, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1988, 1991, and 1996.
In that year the Triennale not only showed the work of innovative young Rationalist designers Figini and Pollini in the Electric House but also work from abroad. This included contributions from the Berlin Werkbund and the Dessau Bauhaus, as well as furniture by Mies Van Der Rohe and electrical products by AEG and Siemens. In 1933 the 5th Triennale moved to the newly built Palazzo d'Arte by Giovanni Muzio in Milan. As well as an exhibition devoted to the Futurist visionary architect Antonio Sant'Elia, the prototype of the Breda ETR 200 electric express train designed by Giuseppe Pagano and Gio Ponti was exhibited as were photographs of Ciam architectural design by Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies Van Der Rohe. Amongst the Italian designs at the 6th Triennale of 1936 was a Modernist dwelling by Gio Ponti and the Salone della Vittoria by Edouardo Persico, Marcello Nizzoli, and others where an acknowledgement of the classicism of Mussolini's ‘Roma Secunda’ sat uneasily with the avant-garde leanings of Rationalism. Amongst progressive work from abroad was glass design by the Finnish designer Aino Aalto, who won a Gold Medal, as well as the birchwood Modernist furniture of her husband Alvar.
The 1940 Triennale came to a premature end with Italy's involvement in the Second World War. After the war the Triennali resumed in 1947, an exhibition largely devoted to housing and reconstruction: including contributions by Ettore Sottsass, Vico Magistretti, and others. At the 1951 Triennale attention was devoted to ‘The Form of the Useful’ in a display organized by Ludovico Bellgoioso and Enrico Peressutti. Such a focus on industrial aesthetics gave rise to feelings that gathered strength in the 1950s, namely that the social and economic dimensions of design were underplayed at the expense of the quest for style. Nonetheless, much experimentation was evident in the exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of foam rubber furniture, organic form, and the ‘rediscovery’ of craft traditions as a stimulus to innovative work in a number of fields. Designers such as Franco Albini, Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglione, Carlo Mollino, and Marco Zanuso did much to suggest the high profile of Italian design in the following decades. Also prominent was the work of Tapio Wirkkala, who designed the critically acclaimed Finnish display. Indeed, Scandinavian design generally featured significantly in the shows of the 1950s. During that and the following decade the Triennali of the 1950s and 1960s continued to elicit critical attention and often fierce debate until 1968 when the 14th Triennale was brought to an early end by student demonstrators. This manifestation of the volatility of political and social events in many ways echoed the increasingly fragile complexities of the Italian design world. Thereafter the Triennali ceased to play such a central role in design research, rhetoric, and relevance.
The 1982 AIGA MEDAL citation: “Upon the occasion of the major retrospective of the Vignellis' work exhibited at Parsons in 1980, The New York Times critic Paul Goldberger characterized Massimo (Italy, 1931 – 2014) and Lella Vignelli (Italy, 1934 – 2016) as “total designers.” They and their office have indeed done it all: industrial and product design, graphic design, book design, magazine and newspaper design, packaging design, interior and exhibit design, furniture design. Massimo and Lella work together in two ways: he concentrates on what they call the “2D”; she handles the “3D”. He's the visionary: “I talk of feelings, possibilities, what a design could be.” She the realist: “I think of feasibility, planning, what a design can be.”
The Vignellis were both born and educated in the industrial, more-European north of Italy, he in Milan and she in Udine, 90 miles away. Massimo's passion was “2D”—graphic design; Lella's family tradition and training were “3D”—architecture. They met at an architects' convention and were married in 1957. Three years later, they opened their first “office of design and architecture” in Milan and designed for Pirelli, Rank Xerox, Olivetti and other design-conscious European firms. But their fascination with the United States, which took root during three years spent here after they were married, eventually grew strong enough to lure them away from Italy permanently. “There is diversity here, and energy, and possibility,” recalls Massimo, “and the need for design.” He cofounded Unimark in 1964, which ballooned and collapsed as the corporate identification boom of the late 1960s hyperventilated, then ran out of breath. In 1972, their present office was formed: Vignelli Associates for two-dimensional design, Vignelli Designs for furniture, objects, exhibitions and interiors.
Not only do the Vignellis design exceeding well, they also think about design. It is not enough that something—a chair, an exhibition, a book, a magazine—looks good and is well designed. The “why” and the “how,” the very process of design itself, must be equally evident and quite beyond the tyranny of individual taste.
“There are three investigations in design,” says Massimo. “The first is the search for structure. Its reward is discipline. The second is the search for specificity. This yields appropriateness. Finally, we search for fun, and we create ambiguity.”