Before Design: Classic | the origins of Italian design

Before Design: Classic, the origins of Italian design | Milan Furniture Fair 2016

The exhibition Before Design: Classic, on view at the Milan Fair in Rho during the furniture fair, is a narration about those objects and pieces of furniture we define as “classic” today; objects which were, and still are, produced by small manufacturing companies which inherit the great Italian craft tradition. A tradition which, after the end of Wold War Two, has been somehow shadowed by the huge success of Italian industrial design.

Before Design: Classic develops across eight theatrical-style rooms – each room has a name inspired by a villa of Palladio – which create a dream-like landscape where the objects on show evoke personal reminiscences, literary suggestions, and cinematographic images.

Cinema is indeed the pivoting point around which the exhibition spins, also thanks to a contribution by acclaimed movie director Matteo Garrone, well-known for his movie “Gomorrah”, who presents a short film in which classic and timeless beauty is depicted as a heritage to preserve and transmit to future generations; that is, the protagonists of the film are children and teens who are committed to conveying, cleaning, and arranging objects, furniture, paintings, and home accessories in an abandoned palace, thus saving them from oblivion.

Before Design: Classic: a still from the short film by Matteo Garrone.

The exhibition is curated by Studio Ciarmoli Queda.