Those who needed these objects in the first place - and created them by doing research, especially within themselves - are the 17 authors: Italian designers between 35 and 85 years old whom Mario Trimarchi asked to "devise something around which to design a home".

Totem objects, with a soul so strong that it becomes the guideline for everything that will accompany them in space. Poetic things, full of meaning, around which to build spaces, homes, ways of living. Tools to rediscover the poetry of designing.

The objects of New Poetic Activism

In the mirrored installation of New Poetic Activism, where each object is surrounded by dry leaves, we therefore find things that suggest ways of existing: very far from the practical needs of everyday life but very close to those of the heart and thought.

There is a swing of mirrors to feel very light (by Raffaella Mangiarotti), marble columns - industrial waste reworked by Paolo Ulian - on which to display a fruit to restore dignity to what we eat, a glass carpet by Federica Biasi that marks the boundaries of a space to be contemplated, a plate by Andrea Anastasio in which a fragment of ceramic becomes the incipit of a contemporary decoration, to remind us that "an accident can be transformed into a constructive foundation", a lava stone hourglass by Francesco Meda, which communicates the passage of time only through the sound of metal balls that move inside it.

More than objects, 17 poems that tell the essence of the way of designing of those who created them.

Francesco Faccin created a raft with a wooden pole and PET bottles to tell us that "only by cultivating the dimension of risk and uncertainty do we remain in contact with the power of frugality". Formafantasma exhibited Alvar Aalto's stools from Artek made with imperfect wood, to avoid wasting material. Michele De Lucchi has put together a group of squared stones to remind us that "balance accepts imbalance, perfection recognizes imperfection".

And so on, leaving those who want to visit the exhibition the pleasure of discovery.

Italian design that finds itself

Asking designers to imagine objects that become ways of living and living, stealing the task that has always been the role of architecture and interiors, may seem like philosophizing as an end in itself but it is not at all. On the contrary.

The beauty of this exhibition lies precisely in this reversal of the gaze which gives value to things designed to create relationships.

It is a rediscovery of the essence of Italian design which has always stood out precisely for its ability to connect people, objects and spaces through a suggested, never shouted poetry.

It is no coincidence that the subtitle of New Poetic Activism, from which we started, speaks precisely of "Italian design", not of projects in general.

"There is an Italian specificity in this profession", says Mario Trimarchi. "The Italian profession, when it comes to projects, is different from that of other countries: not because it deals with higher, lower, more right-wing, more left-wing issues, but simply because it is more autonomous. It could, in its purest sense, even do without industry and be a knowledge or a profession or an art. The manifestation of an autonomy of thought".

And, actually, as Trimarchi explains in the catalogue, the exhibition asks if that all-Italian attitude to seeking unexplored design territories, independently of the world of production, is still current.

The answer is, of course, yes.