Abstract:

After the death of Achille Castiglioni, one of the main protagonists of Italian design, his professional Studio, located in the heart of Milan since 1962, was saved from being dismantled and fully preserved thanks to the contribution of La Triennale di Milano.
It’s the first case of a total protection, not only of an architectural space and its contents (furniture, drawings, models, photographs, collection of anonymous objects and materials of inspiration), but also of the relations with those who collaborated with the architect-designer and are now living testimonies of his design method.
The museum-studio is now engaged both with the cataloguing of all the materials it contains and the opening to the public through guided tours.
For the first time in Italy, the public can visit the studio of a designer, as it does for the houses of artists and musicians, thus entering into contact with an extraordinary variety of materials and emotions that can be transmitted. In a short time, it has become a place of integrative education for design students.
In 2006, the INDACO Department of Politecnico di Milano has signed an agreement for a collaboration with La Triennale di Milano to deepen the study of this place and check its potential development for the knowledge of the practice of design.
This collaboration was born within the frame of a national research co-financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Research on the theme of "design enhancement of cultural heritage."
The case was particularly interesting because the Studio could be considered a "cultural contemporary good" and because here design reflected on itself, on its valorisation and knowledge. It was also particularly significant to investigate participatory and immersive modes of teaching design and compare them with the real world of project.
The research was divided into three phases:
1. Analysis, through the multi-dimensional eyes of photography, video and drawing, of the current situation of this particular place that has been transformed from a place of production into a place of knowledge, from a “place of doing” to a “place of showing”. A show, however, which is never a passive experience for the visitors, but thanks to the presence of collaborators and relatives of Achille Castiglioni, it becomes a participatory and emotional one. A "place of living memories", where it’s possible for experts and students to live an immersive experience into the project and the world of this figure.
2. Rendering of the value of this evocative place through an exhibition, displayed at La Triennale di Milano in 2007 and at the Shiodome Palace in Tokyo in 2008. In a metaphysical reconstruction that recreates the walls of the Studio, by drawing on the floor its perimeter and showing three-dimensionally only some main elements, twelve graphs and photographic triptychs were displayed as an interpretation of the place, together with some products designed by Castiglioni and a video, in order to link together material space and immaterial memory.
3. Conceiving of strategic scenarios of actions that could increase the educational value of the visits in such a manner to make them even more participating, toward the direction of “a project research lab on design”, rather than toward the one of a "museum". We hope it may become a pilot and exemplary case to set up a network system of connections among different places related to the culture and practice of design.

Keywords:

academic research project, design, integrative learning, cultural contemporary good, places of design.