The installation project dedicated to 32+1 Compasso d’Oro awards is a home, the home of design. The idea of ‘home’ refers to domesticity, to living, to objects that are well-conceived, designed and constructed and which constitute both the tools for everyday use as well as the components of a broader horizon, which begins with the home and continues into the city and landscape. We can imagine design as the collective body of practices, actions and objects, components and tools that make the world habitable, that make it a home, that allow individuals and communities to feel they belong to a reality and to recognise themselves in its symbols.

Domesticating, making reality habitable and transforming it into a world is design’s responsibility. 

The exhibition project brings together objects and components that are quite diverse in terms of their use, iconicity and diffusion, of their belonging to the collective imagination or their technical functions. Bringing together such diverse objects inside a defined perimeter is the first act that aims to offer a cohesive idea of design, one that heralds its common mission, its civic calling, rather than the punctual and fragmented nature of singular inventions.

To productions scattered throughout everyday reality, each committed to promoting itself, the exhibition offers a space for discussion where a convergence of intentions and purposes prevails over the individual units.

It is a matter of reinstating the lesson of what is Modern, which acknowledged in design a pedagogical function at the beginning of the 20th century, widespread because it was made accessible through mass production. For these reasons, the project consists of the construction of a ‘place’, a welcoming and lively dwelling, where one can stay, sit down and observe, read, converse. Tinged with a warm, physical and protective red, illuminated by a constellation of delicate and pleasant light fittings, as in a house.

Each of the 32+1 Compasso d’Oro awards has been assigned a specific space (contoured base, recess, device that opens), created ad hoc, which together forms a large house with a patio whose sides can be closed and opened, with seating for visitors who can be near the exhibited objects, as if ‘at home’. The ‘house’ is painted ruby red with text and icons in tone-on-tone colour, white and gold, echoing the ADI ‘Compasso d’Oro’. Alternating two-toned natural and red lighting, operated by a time-controlled system, accentuates the features of the installation according to the times and moments defined by the design. The red lighting activates itself at set times, transforming the pavilion into an atmospheric and welcoming environment.

TOP Project Partner: ABB