Triennale Milano's Museo del Design Italiano, directed by Marco Sammicheli, appears in a wholly new guise, and proposes a project which, setting out from Triennale's collection and the archives of previous International Exhibitions, recounts how Italian design has always had a courageous approach dedicated to exploration, and has tackled what is not yet known as a mean of research. The show, entitled La tradizione del nuovo (the tradition of the new), brings together works, installations, documents, creative processes and experimental pieces that have contributed to the development of society, touching on sociological, commercial, ecological, technological and cultural aspects between 1964 and 1996.

The set-up offers visitors some of the most significant examples of research coming from Italian designers, and invites to explore them further with separate exhibition areas that follow a development through time – from the 13th Triennale Tempo Libero, in 1964, to the 19th Triennale Identità e differenze, in 1996 – and a range of themes that take the form of an archipelago of words, phenomena, and actions – Gravity, Human Containers, Environments, ‘80s Movements, ‘90s Playground, Synesthesia and Music – and creatives who have fostered unexpected events, doubts, answers, and technical progress, such as Liisi Beckmann, Claudio Salocchi, Roberto Sambonet, Exhibition Design Group, Fiorucci Dxing, Alberto Meda, and Clino Trini Castelli.

The staging for the show, designed by Zaven, foregrounds materials, project design and project culture methods, outlining new formal and creative approaches, to renew the process of experimentation and discovery that is an intrinsic part of research applied to Italian design.