Must-See Triennale Design Exhibits Milan Design Week

MILAN — Now that the Olympics have come and gone, Milan’s Triennale Museum has become the embassy of all things design.

Situated on the edge of the city’s verdant Parco Sforzesco, the museum will host a series of design exhibits during Milan Design Week, which starts Monday and ends Sunday.

The Eames House

The Eames Pavilion System introduces the buildable Eames house in the image of Charles and Ray Eames’ iconic Los Angeles home. The debut at Triennale will translate the Eameses’ pioneering architectural spirit into a fully engineered construction system that will be available for order on a global scale.

Presented by the Eames Office and Kettal, the system introduces two life-sized constructions of Eames pavilions, alongside newly commissioned scale models of eight houses designed by Charles and Ray Eames. The exhibit will also include rare documents, videos, photos and artifacts from the Eames archives.

Barber | Osgerby Celebrate 30 Years

Named “Alphabet,” it’s a major retrospective dedicated to London-based designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, marking 30 years of their influential practice. The exhibition is the largest monographic presentation of Barber Osgerby ever staged in an Italian museum. It offers a comprehensive exploration of three decades of work, spanning early furniture and product design through to major public commissions and global collaborations.

In an interview with WWD, Barber explained that the milestone is less about the “number of years” and more about the opportunity to share the duo’s Italian-centric design journey, which started with being discovered by Giulio Cappellini and later making the Loop table together in 1996. “It’s very heavily focused on Italian design and Italian designers. So to get a kind of retrospective show there as non-Italians it was quite interesting to us.”

Fredericia: A Chronicle of Danish Design

“Fredericia: A Chronicle of Danish Design,” an exhibition explores more than a century of Danish furniture design through Fredericia. The family-owned design house founded in 1911 has played a pioneering and formative role in shaping Danish modernism. Presented as a series of immersive environments, it showcases original works, rarely seen vintage pieces and archival materials never before shown to the public.

The exhibition brings together works by Børge Mogensen, Hans J. Wegner and Nanna Ditzel with contemporary pieces by Jasper Morrison, Barber Osgerby, Cecilie Manz and others.

“The Triennale is just a calmer space that invites for reflection…it feels very fulfilling to present the peaks of what we have done and step outside of the newness craze for a brief moment,” Rasmus Graversen, chief executive officer and third-generation owner, told WWD.

Lella and Massimo Vignelli. A Language of Clarity

“Lella and Massimo Vignelli. A Language of Clarity” is the first major retrospective dedicated to the celebrated Italian designers, who died in 2016 and 2014 respectively.

Curated by Francesca Picchi with Marco Sammicheli and Studio Mut, the exhibition traces the Vignellis’ 60-year career across graphic design, product design, and visual identity. Long regarded as ambassadors of Italian design in the U.S., the pair’s life work spanned between Milan and New York and is highlighted through iconic projects including identity programs for Ford and American Airlines, the 1972 New York subway map and the distinctive Bloomingdale’s logotype.

 Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito. Continuous Present

“Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito. Continuous Present” is a major monographic exhibition dedicated to late designer Andrea Branzi, seen through the eyes of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Toyo Ito, who was also a friend of the late designer.

Conceived by Ito, in collaboration with Lorenza Branzi and Nicoletta Morozzi, and curated by Nina Bassoli, curator for architecture, urban regeneration and cities at Triennale and Michela Alessandrini, curator at Fondation Cartier, the exhibition is a biographical itinerary — from Branzi’s first radical experimentations in Florence with Archizoom Associati, Alchimia and Memphis, up to the development of an anthropological approach to design — highlighting Branzi’s constant research into the topics of fragility, hybridization, coexistence, ecology and the cross-fertilization between disciplines.

The Rhythm of the Eye: Don Bronstein and the Jazz Scene in Chicago 1953-1968

“The Rhythm of the Eye: Don Bronstein and the Jazz Scene in Chicago 1953-1968” chronicles the work of Don Bronstein, a prolific photographer. Until his untimely death in 1968 at age of 41, his lens captured seminal moments of the jazz and blues scene of Chicago during the ‘50s and ‘60s. As the art director and photographer for the legendary Chess Records in Chicago, he shot and designed more than 500 album covers for labels including Columbia Records, Atlantic Records, Argo, Verve and Universal Music Group. He photographed America’s most celebrated jazz and blues musicians such as Miles Davis, Muddy Waters, Etta James, Louis Armstrong, Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Sammy Davis Jr. and Eartha Kitt. 

“His work exists at the intersection of art, design, and pop culture — long before these fields naturally converged,” said his daughter, interior designer Julie Hillman.  

The exhibition marks the first time his work has been shown in Europe.