Enzo Mari and the Museo del Design Italiano

The question of whether or not to set up a design museum in Italy, or rather in Milan, was the subject of a fierce cultural debate that went on for more than fifty years. Intellectuals, architects, designers and entrepreneurs bickered endlessly about the “if” and “where” and, above all, the “how” to celebrate and present such a chaotic discipline of such uncertain scope. Enzo Mari did his part when, in 2009, he launched a collective curatorial project from the pages of Abitare magazine, in the form of a game entitled “For a new Museo del Design”. In the first issue, Mari set out the cornerstones of the culture of design, and stressed the need to take into account the difference between “the art of design” and the “decorative arts”. He invited nine personalities, including Michele De Lucchi, Joseph Rykwert, Vittorio Gregotti, Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, Cini Boeri, Alessandro Mendini, Manolo De Giorgi, and Giampiero Bosoni to choose five objects that could be objectively considered worthy of a place in a museum. In addition to the five proposals, each curator was asked to accept or reject each of the works that had been chosen by those that had come before. The fifty objects would then constitute the permanent collection of a hypothetical design museum: objects of the highest aesthetic and formal quality, with no decorative uncertainty and thus free from the inevitable decline that this would entail. One of the fundamental features of Mari’s Museo del Design game was that, in order to be admitted to the museum, each object was to be filtered by time and thus far enough from its creation. Mari set this minimum time limit at 45 years. With a variant regarding the author of the article, we can follow the rules of this game – 5 objects designed by Enzo Mari by 1975 – and go on a very brief tour through the more than 1,600 objects of Italian design now in the Permanent Collection of Triennale Milano.

1957, 16 animali, Danese Milano A thick wooden panel is cut by a single line that breaks it up into 16 elements, each of which bears the distinctive features of an animal. Each element has at least four lives: as part of a whole, like in a jigsaw puzzle, as an element to be matched with the other parts, as an individual entity, and as the protagonist of all the uses and narratives that might arise in the end user’s imagination. Even though extremely neat in terms of its form, this is a highly complex system that lets a child freely exercise their natural propensity for discovery and for finding out about the world around them. It is an object that lends itself to a whole variety of interpretations, for its use is only suggested by its shape, though this does not influence its use.

1966, Glifo, Enzo Mari with Elio Mari, Gavina Montecatini commissioned Enzo Mari to come up with a project to explore the potential offered by injection-moulded ABS. The project selected was for a bookcase, which was then produced by Dino Gavina. The base element is a cubic module consisting of square walls measuring 35 cm per side. The design revolves around the form of the joint – which was covered by an industrial patent – that forms part of each wall, so that the bookcase can be rearranged into an almost infinite number of shapes. At the time when Ikea was beginning to produce the furniture it sold and was entering the international market, Mari put his mind to a design that would be cheap to produce, easily transportable and robust, and that could be assembled by anyone without the use of tools. The bookcase was well received by critics but achieved only mediocre commercial success. The public, who were not used to taking part in completing a piece of furniture, mistook lightness for fragility.