Display: the presence of future
An archive/laboratory of the immaterial heritage of architectural exhibitions
The area of studies of the research is the ‘architecture exhibition’, intended as a medium for communication and research in the architecture field and as an intangible heritage to be investigated, cataloged, and “archived”. On the one hand, the research aims to compensate for the delay that architecture history and criticism have in this sector when compared with other disciplines; on the other hand, its plan is to define a paradigm and a set of scientific procedures that allow the production of ideas and goods (above all immaterial) to become fertile and accessible “heritage”.
The main research is to set up both an archive in the form of an exhibition and an exhibition of archives, where the most significant aspect of the activity consists of linking those events with the theoretical, critical, and cultural phenomena that run through both the disciplinary culture of Italian architecture and the complexity of the country’s historical and social evolution. In particular, the research focuses on the construction of a digital platform designed to order and disseminate a so far insufficiently investigated aspect of cultural heritage: the legacy of architecture exhibitions.
The project is in line with Mission 1 “Digitalization, innovation, competitiveness, culture and tourism” of the National Research Council (PNRR), highlighting the role of digitalization as a tool that implements the dissemination and penetration of cultural contents to different user groups, in line with the definitions of the museum as a place of inclusion and development, currently being re-defined by ICOM.
The research integrates three units (Università degli Studi di Camerino, Politecnico di Milano, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) and will lean on collaboration with other research institutions, including the MAXXI and the Milan Triennale.
The Milanese unit intends to be active on the three fronts of research, the one aimed at the past: the archive; at the present: the observatory/interface; and to the future: the laboratory, integrating the research phases with the other two units associated with the project.
In particular, the skills of the components of the unit find their most logical use in some specific parts of the research program, that is, in the graphic restitution of past experiences, in the design development of the concept or real exhibition prototype, and in the development, on the theoretical level, of new exhibition strategies. In the unit’s research, the focus will strongly be on the exhibition design, its preparation and execution, as well as on the cultural project and its ability to receive and transmit elements of theory and technique of architectural design, measuring the intensity of relations with different geographical and cultural contexts.
About the field research, the unit deals with the Triennale di Milano as its main case study, an institution, active since 1933, which represents an experience of unique interest for the breadth of the issues addressed, for the relevance of the exhibitions held, for the constant involvement and overlapping of different disciplinary cultures. Over time, the Triennale has experimented with fundamental aspects of exhibiting architecture, marking fundamental stages of the Italian design culture, establishing the theoretical and productive coordinates of Milanese and Italian architecture and design. Furthermore, the statute for international exhibitions has favored, and continues to favor, a dimension of comparison and exchange of strong scientific and media relevance, also reverberating in a series of collateral initiatives permeated with the same international dimension.