Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito
As a tribute to architect and designer Andrea Branzi, the Triennale Milano, in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, is presenting the exhibition ‘Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito: Continuous Present’. The retrospective honours Branzi as one of the defining figures of contemporary Italian design. It will open with a lecture on 20 April as part of Milan Design Week.
The exhibition was conceived by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Toyo Ito, who collaborated closely with Andrea Branzi for many years and maintained a long-standing friendship with him. Developed in collaboration with Branzi’s daughter Lorenza Branzi and his wife Nicoletta Morozzi, and curated by Nina Bassoli, Curator for Architecture at Triennale Milano, and Michela Alessandrini, Curator at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, it follows a biographical trajectory that spans Branzi’s early radical experiments in Florence with Archizoom Associati, his work with Studio Alchimia and Memphis, and his later anthropological approach to design. Central themes include fragility, hybridisation, coexistence, ecology, and the exchange between disciplines.
A Practice in the 'Continuous Present'
Toyo Ito structures the exhibition around the concept of an “unceasing flow”, in which Branzi’s work belongs neither to the past nor to the future but exists in a “continuous present.” More than 400 works—including installations, models, drawings, design objects, as well as archival videos and documents, offer insight into a practice that connects architecture, design, landscape, and theory.
From No-Stop City to Hybrid Objects
The exhibition is organised into eleven thematic sections, ranging from early projects to key works such as ‘No-Stop City’, as well as material experiments, landscape and interior design projects, including the furniture series Animali Domestici. The presentation also highlights the environmental installations from ‘Open Enclosures’, while later sections such as ‘Ospitalità cosmica’ and ‘Oggetto Ibrido’ explore Branzi’s anthropological approach and his concept of hybrid relationships within design.
