Aspen reloaded: what it is and why go to Dropcity

Why Aspen, the Italian Manifesto is a must-see

It will be because of 'Italy: a New Collective Landscape', the under 35 design exhibition curated by Angela Rui at the ADI Museum, which explicitly refers to 'Italy: The New Domestic Landscape', curated by Emilio Ambasz at the MoMA in New York in 1972, but the air feels like a sense not so much of nostalgia as of redemption: a bit as if the entire Italian design community felt the need to reiterate to the world that Italy is the point of reference for this discipline.

What is Aspen, the Italian Manifesto

'Aspen, the Italian Manifesto', the installation curated by Francesca Picchi and designed by Studio Ossidiana of Rotterdam, will be inaugurated at tunnel 142 on Sunday 16 April at 4.00 pm.

Inspired by the legendary congress organized in Aspen (Colorado) in 1989 by the International Design Conference, the event today returns to the public: moderated by Michele Lupi the dialogue will involve protagonists and witnesses of the time including Antonio Colombo, Alberto Saibene, Francesco Dondina, Franco Raggi together with Andrea Zagato, Elena Dalla Piana, Giovanna Castiglioni, Giovanni Cutolo, Giulio Iacchetti.

The new Italian idea

"That of 1989 was a second episode", says Francesca Picchi, protagonist of today and yesterday. But also a university lecturer, a fine intellectual, highly cultured, and mother of all design curators, "the first, from 1981 entitled 'The New Italian Idea', was much ahead of the actuality of the era.

The Aspen event, born from an idea by Domus magazine together with Olivetti, wanted to take stock of the Italian design system at a time when Italy was a protagonist on the international scene.

It is no coincidence that the appointment involved chefs and personalities from the fashion world, precisely as evidence of a significant expansion of the language", recalls Francesca, invited as a student of the Politecnico.

A conference under a tent

“There was an extraordinary organization, each of us was assigned a house”.

My imagination, at least mine, runs to that small and exclusive ski resort in Colorado ready to welcome some of the most visionary Italian designers in a summer July at the end of the eighties: Achille Castiglioni, Ettore Sottsass, Andrea Branzi, Mario Bellini, Gae Aulenti, Italo Lupi.

“Among them was a very young Steve Jobs,” she recalls.

“It was a very convivial dimension. You used to go to dinner and wait for Achille (Castiglioni, editor's note), lost in some supermarket looking for anonymous objects. Then there was Italo Lupi, Ettore Sottsass, let's say that the theatrical dimension was very present”, not only because the conference took place under a tent designed by Eero Saarinen (model revisited in Milan by Studio Ossidiana).

Building ideas, but not definitively

"But because, quoting Sottsass, 'Italians have in mind the model of the commedia dell'arte', as if to say that they improvised". The choice of an extemporaneous architecture therefore favored the relationship dynamics: “The tent is the starting point. Because that kind of structure, free, not definitive, allowed things to happen spontaneously. And that's exactly how it went.

Today together with Andrea Caputo, we have decided to evoke that historic moment not only to historicize it, recover all the material composed mainly of soundscapes (recordings, editor's note) and archive it here, for the centre".