The Triennale turns 100, to be summarized in ten stages
There Milan Triennale turns one hundred years old. And while he looks to the future with seventeen new projects and a five-year plan (Designing the future) just presented by Stefano Boeri and Carla Morogallo (respectively, president and general manager), it is worth retracing their history. Which, stage after stage, is strongly intertwined with the changes and protagonists of our country. Here, then, is a hundred years in ten stages.
1-The birth? In Monza
The Milan Triennale was actually born in Monza. It was 1923 and, in truth, at the beginning it was called the Biennale. Inspired by the great Universal Expositions in London, Paris, Vienna and Barcelona, it is wanted by a philanthropic organization, the Humanitarian Society, and the Municipality of Milan who, together, give life to the first “International Exhibition of Decorative Arts” at the inside the neoclassical frame of Villa Reale. It was immediately a great success and, even if in Italy there is still no talk of design, from the first four editions in Monza the presence of Depero, Gio Ponti, Nizzoli and Gruppo 7, with Figini and Pollini stand out. Having grown in importance, in 1930 it changed its headquarters and arrived in Milan.
2-In the Sempione Park
For its location, the Municipality is thinking of a new building in a symbolic place. He locates it in the heart of Parco Sempione, between the Castello Sforzesco, the Arco della Pace and the Arena and entrusts the project to the rationalist Giovanni Muzio. The author of the Cà Brutta of via Moscova and the headquarters of the Catholic University of Milan, thus has the opportunity to create (in record time because the works last only a year and a half) his most important work. The building is an absolute novelty: as big as an industrial space (12,000 square meters) illuminated by skylights, flexible, open. Also for this reason it has withstood the passage of time, even with the necessary radical restyling of the interiors in the 1990s, becoming a stage and place of work and research for at least five generations of architects and designers.
3-The Bernocchi family
A little mystery? The inscription on the central arch of the main entrance: “Palazzo dell’Arte Fondazione Bernocchi”. Few people know that, if the Triennale exists, it is above all thanks to the generosity of Senator Antonio Bernocchi, who, together with his brothers (textile industrialists originally from Castellanza) donated five million lire in 1929 (equivalent to forty-four million euros today) to the realization of the project. And this explains why, at the entrance to the Triennale, there is also a plaque in his memory. Antonio Bernocchi, however, died before seeing the finished work.
4-The inauguration with the king
On 10 May 1933, in the presence of King Vittorio Emanuele III and the President of the Senate, both the new Palazzo delle Arti and the fifth edition of the Milan Triennale were inaugurated with great pomp. The news? For the first time – alongside the decorative and industrial arts, modern architecture will also find space in the halls on the ground floor. De Chirico, Sironi, Campigli and Carrà exhibit at this edition. Among the novelties of the Triennale, also the presence of an elegant recreational space, right next to the exhibition halls: the restaurant and the concert hall.
5-The war years
During the Nazi occupation, the restaurant became the seat of the German High Officers’ Recreation Club and was renamed the Balhaus, ballroom. The terrace, on the other hand, is closed to the public because it is available to the anti-aircraft. These were difficult years which – between July and August 1943 – culminated in the destruction of a wing of the Palazzo, together with fifty percent of the buildings in Milan, under the heavy British bombing. A black page in the history of Milan that Salvatore Quasimodo evokes in the dramatic lines “The city is dead, it’s dead”, of his poetry Milan 1943.
6-The Compasso d’Oro is born
In the years of reconstruction, a Milanese district owes its birth to the Triennale. It is the QT8 (Quartiere Triennale zone 8) experimental project commissioned in 1947 by Piero Bottoni, at the time extraordinary commissioner of the Triennale. These were the years that also marked the great boom in industrial design and Gio Ponti in 1954 proposed establishing an Award. This is how the Compasso d’oro was born and the award ceremony, after a couple of editions in the warehouses of La Rinascente and in the halls of the Circolo della Stampa, finds its natural location right in the Palazzo dell’Arte. The famous compass was designed by Abe Steiner (then head of the advertising division of La Rinascente); to realize it, Marco Zanuso and Alberto Rosselli. Since 2021, however, the award has changed homes: today its headquarters are at the ADI Design Museum.
7- Even Mike Bongiorno
The Agorà Theater occupies the basement floor of the Palazzo dell’arte: 499 seats in an environment with perfect acoustics designed by Gualtiero Galmanini and Giovanni Muzio. For many years the Theater has hosted experimental theatrical reviews and concerts, few know instead that, in 1946, under the direction of the Film and Theater Industries, it was the first television studio. On 11 September 1949 the first television broadcast of a few minutes was broadcast from here and, to do the honors, there was a very young presenter: Corrado. In 1954 Mike Bongiorno arrives instead for the program Arrivals and departures.
8-«Enthusiasm for Jimi!»
It is the headline of the Corriere della Sera of 24 May 1968, the day following the concert-event of Jimi Hendrix at the Triennale or, better, in the ballroom. Ballroom which, for some years, has first become a dance and then the Milanese branch of Piper in Rome. In the Italy of musicarelli, Canzonissima and Cantagiro, Jimi Hendrix’s guitar arrives in Milan and attracts thousands of fans so much that, for reasons of space, many are unable to enter.
9-The Fuorisalone is born
In 1990 the Fuori Salone made its debut, an event which, during the days of the Salone del Mobile in Milan, brings design out of institutional places to invade the city with exhibitions, talks, concerts. The Triennale thus becomes the first and most important stage for events such as, in 2007, a memorable theatrical show organized and interpreted by a very young Fabio Novembre.
10-The new century
After 2000, the first Museum of Italian Design was born in the Triennale: one thousand six hundred pieces among the most representative of Italian design since 1946, a journey through the works of absolute protagonists such as Achille Castiglioni, Vico Magistretti, Gio Ponti, Enzo Mari, Marco Zanuso, Mario Bellini, Alessandro Mendini and so on. Inaugurated in 2007 and renovated in 2019, together with the collection of the ADI Design Museum, today it represents one of the fundamental stages of design tourism which, every year, attracts thousands of visitors to Milan.