Interni milanesi. Home interiors by Vico Magistretti

The exhibition INTERNI MILANESI - Home interiors by Vico Magistretti focuses on one of the less familiar aspects of the architect’s work: the design of urban interiors, modelled through painstaking, precise actions on the spatial constants that recur in the language of Magistretti (staircases, fireplaces, shaped openings, etc.) and at the
level of furnishings.
The first area of intervention comprises reflections on the three-dimensional evolution of the house, in a contemporary reinterpretation of the valuable lesson of the Raumplan developed by Adolf Loos at the start of the 20th century, as well as
continuous investigation of aspects like the indoor-outdoor relationship, the sizing of openings, the combination of different materials.
At the level of furnishings, apparently random combinations between period furniture or custom pieces, exceptional specimens of the Italian approach to construction of bourgeois homes from the start of the century to the 1950s, and icons of Made in Italy inserted with surgical precision in the same spaces, demonstrate that it is possible to achieve a balance between antique and modern – as theorized by Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Magistretti’s mentor – also in the field of interior architecture.
The exhibition concentrates on nine large furnished flats and small cells in residential buildings, seen in three different phases of what has been imagined as a work in progress: an exhibition in a state of becoming, which maintains the same categories of critical interpretation of the single projects, while presenting each of the specific cases, updated three times during the year of the show with new materials never exhibited elsewhere.
The choice of an evolving exhibit has been suggested by the extraordinary wealth of materials conserved in Studio Magistretti Archive, which besides hundreds of freehand of great quality, contains a vast quantity of historical images made by some of the most important Italian photographers. Only the combination of sketches and photos, in fact, can
allow visitors to understand the architect’s way of operating. Many photographs, shown here thanks to the precious cooperation of Casali archive at the IUAV University of Venice, are by Giorgio Casali, who thanks to his role as the official photographer of the magazine Domus (from 1951 to 1983) constantly monitored the work of Vico Magistretti.

During the Salone del Mobile (12/17 April 2016) the Foundation will be open every day from 11.00 to 20.00, free admission

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