The new thematic in-depth analysis of the permanent collection of the ADI Design Museum, to propose continuous and renewed interpretations of Italian design

Social, cultural, and technical phenomenology: a contextual and not just chronological reading to recognize some recurring keys to interpreting Italian design and, with these, also the reasons for its success.

The exhibition DesignUP - solutions of continuity is the new thematic in-depth analysis of the permanent collection of the Compasso d'Oro award, which, in this renewed selection of products and design methodologies, intends to represent each product as the result of a complex system, solutions of continuity precisely, which give iconic Italian design objects their uniqueness. The exhibition project highlights the most specific features of what we now call Made in Italy, and how the design culture has permeated all the different phases of the country's development. It has humanized mass production processes, allowed for a rethink of service offerings, strengthened the drive of industrial districts by fostering encounters with science and technology, and decisively contributed to the transformations of the manufacturing system, enabling Italian products to position themselves in the high-end segment of international markets.

"The selection of the 30 Compasso d'Oro awards from the DesignUP exhibition has a dual purpose: on the one hand, to highlight the role of design as a powerful innovation activator starting from specific market needs, industry, and people; on the other hand, to identify some elements of discontinuity in thought but also in type, usage modes, materials, that the selected artifacts would like to represent," explains curator Francesco Zurlo from the Polytechnic University of Milan.

A selection of objects therefore reinterpreted with a new display, to provide different views and facets of the Compasso d'Oro winners, from 1954 to today. The museum aspires to offer innovative design, expanding the interpretation to cultural and productive contexts, in relation to contemporaneity and its values.

"From the post-war period to today," continues curator Stefano Micelli from Ca' Foscari University, "design has played an active connection role between a rapidly changing demand and an offer that has been able to adapt consistently to market forces."

The new setup of the ADI Design Museum has identified the projects that have characterized these transformations, grouping the awards given from the 1950s to today into sequences that reflect the phases of the country's economic development. Each selected project defines, in its own way, a turning point within these evolutionary phases.