LUCA MEDA / LA FELICITÀ DEL PROGETTO (THE JOY OF DESIGNING)—
8 MAY — 8 JUNE 2014
LA TRIENNALE DI MILANO

Press conference: 7 May 11.30am
Opening: 7 May 7pm

La Triennale di Milano, in partnership with the Design Archives of Venice’s IUAV University and with Molteni&C, Dada and Unifor, pays tribute to Luca Meda, an example of the perfect symbiosis between creativity and business, between art and industry, the creator of numerous products that have distinguished the history of the Molteni Group. Almost a paradox for a designer who used his pencil more than any other tool to describe and reinvent reality. Drawings, designs, models, catalogues, photographs and objects on show to describe the multi-faceted talents of a figure who had a profound influence on the history of design and architecture between the 1960s and 1990s.

The exhibition, curated by Nicola Braghieri, Rosa Chiesa, Serena Maffioletti and Sofia Meda and mounted by Chiara Meda and Nicola Gallizia, is indebted to the generous contribution of the Swiss graphic designer Felix Humm, who partnered Luca Meda for many years in creating Molteni&C e Dada’s corporate image.

Molteni&C, Dada and Unifor have contributed to the exhibition with designs, iconographic material and furnishings that have marked the company’s history, some still in production, underlining the modernity of Luca Meda’s designs.

For the Molteni Group this is an opportunity to pay tribute to the designer and friend who significantly and long time contributed to define the Corporate Identity. An intense and inspired story. But it is also the first stage of a journey to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the company, which was founded in 1934.

Since 2012 the Luca Meda fund has been deposited at the Design Archives of the IUAV University in Venice.

Luca Meda and the Molteni Group
From Vanni Pasca’s text for M&C 02, 2008

Luca Meda was a designer who, most unusually in the history of Italian design, worked at great length for the companies of the Molteni Group: not only designing most of their products and displays, but also participating in the choice of graphics, communications and in creating events. This meant establishing close and continual cooperation with the Molteni family, taking a decisive role in forming a clear and recognizable corporate identity and culture.

Meda should also be remembered for his partnership with Aldo Rossi, with whom he shared a refusal to see modernity as a radical break with history, and attention to the typologies sedimented in memory.

From the end of the 1970s on, Meda’s work distinguished the Molteni &C, Dada and Unifor image, in particular through two types of products. First of all, modular furniture, from the legendary 505 through to the Cd, Chiosco and Pass systems; the Gliss, 7volte7 and Glissquattro wardrobes. New-concept products, but which shared a design approach which, in the case of 505, for example, guaranteed its incredible longevity. By gradually introducing new solutions and focusing attention on the functional elements, technical details, materials and colors, the rationality of the framework in fact enabled the system to be periodically upgraded, as a sort of work in progress. This series includes the numerous models of successful kitchens designed for Dada: Vela, Pergola, Nuvola and Banco, his masterpiece which, twenty years on, is still a benchmark in the world of kitchen design. For Unifor too, Luca Meda created office systems that made design history, such as, Misura, P4 and Progetto 25.

The second genre consists of a broad series of furniture, beds, sofas, armchairs and easy chairs, tables and small tables — such as Capotavola, Portafinestra, Primafila, Risiedo, Vivette, Poggio, Piroscafo and Teatro designed with Aldo Rossi — a veritable domestic panorama.