Triennale di Milano

The Triennale is Milan's design museum — an institution dedicated to Italian design, architecture, fashion, and the applied arts that has been the intellectual engine of the city's design industry since 1933. The museum occupies the Palazzo dell'Arte, a rationalist building by Giovanni Muzio at the edge of Parco Sempione, and its exhibitions consistently set the agenda for international design discourse.

The permanent collection, Museo del Design Italiano, traces the history of Italian design from the post-war economic miracle (when companies like Olivetti, Alessi, and Kartell established Italy as the world capital of industrial design) through the radical design movements of the 1960s and 70s to contemporary practice. The objects — chairs, lamps, espresso makers, typewriters — are displayed as art, which in Italy they essentially are. A Castiglioni lamp or a Sottsass shelf is taken as seriously here as a painting in the Brera.

The Triennale's temporary exhibitions are where Milan's design conversation happens — major retrospectives of designers (Gio Ponti, Achille Castiglioni, Ettore Sottsass), themed exhibitions on urbanism, sustainability, and the future of making, and the International Exposition (held every three years) that gives the institution its name. During Salone del Mobile (the annual furniture fair in April), the Triennale becomes the intellectual centre of a citywide design festival that transforms Milan into a showroom.