After the awful year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Fondazione Vico Magistretti reopens to the public and presents the exhibition Magistretti Revisited.

Magistretti Revisited reconceives the studio where Vico worked throughout his life, alongside Franco Montella, the “geometra Montella”, his longstanding and extraordinary assistant.
When, in 2010, Fondazione Magistretti opened to the public the large entrance room where Montella used to work among drafting tables, closets, chests of drawers, chairs, prototypes, became the space for temporary exhibitions. Empty of everything, every year it welcomes a new set-up for new insights and stories about Vico’s work through the documents of the historical archive, now open to all thanks to the web portal archivio.vicomagistretti.it.

With Magistretti Revisited Fondazione goes back to its origins. The chests of drawers - some of which belonged to Pier Giulio Magistretti, Vico's father and first owner of the studio - the drafting table, the panels on the walls covered with notes, postcards, drawings and photographs, the models scattered here and there, the eyeglasses placed casually on the counter, as well as the Montella’s cigarettes recall the atmosphere and the appearance of the studio where Vico and Franco spent many of their days.

Sketches, notes, photographic prints, magazine and newspaper clippings displayed in the original furnishings of the studio combined together with Magistretti's words - taken from the many interviews released over the years and transcribed with his handwriting, which for the occasion became a font - trace a path that guides visitors to discover the deeper meaning of Vico's work, between architecture and industrial design.

The exhibition begins with the first interior projects, with the participation in the Triennali of the reconstruction and the economic boom periods up to the most famous buildings in Milan and beyond. It then continues with the first objects designed for the exhibitions at the Palazzo dell'Arte up to the most significant industrial design resulting from professional partnerships established by Magistretti with the companies. All around, the space of the studio that, with its dimensions and its conformation, is able to explain with simplicity and immediacy a way of doing design and architecture, which Vico explained thus: “my work consists in giving concepts”.

Here is the video of the exhibition opening.