More than thirty large-scale photographs and three models of built work, installations and projects by one of the leading protagonists of the post-war revival of Italian design culture

This travelling exhibit opened at the Milan Polytechnic in April 2006 and was originally curated by Federico Bucci and Augusto Rossari. The North American version of the show was assembled by Professor Kay Bea Jones of the Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University and supplements the original photographs with models produced by Ohio State students. The installation at CUDC was curated by Professor Maurizio Sabini.

The exhibit surveys the museum and installation projects of Franco Albini (1905-1977). focusing on his five Italian museums built between 1949 and 1979. The exhibit also includes two artistic installations that explored idealized domestic space for the Milan Triennale (1936 and 1940) and numerous gallery interiors and exhibition and shop designs from the years after World War II.

Albini's signature use of steel and glass exploits suspension devices and celebrates the symbolic expression of gravity. Since many of these projects were ephemeral, the photographs stand in for those no longer accessible. His unique museums, each behaving in response to complex physical contexts, gallery programs and visionary clients, offer no identification with a particular agenda. Instead, Albini employs novel materials and spatial principles that reveal his rationalist roots but develop the ideas of a mature pragmatist whose poetic sensibilities move gradually away from modernist positiviism.

Closing/Open House
Monday, October 9, ASID Career Day