The Triennale design museum in Milan has had a successful eight years under the presidency of Stefano Boeri, with Marco Sammicheli leading its design programmes. It has made the most of its permanent collection, given the public a chance to see its archives, and staged an impressive series of exhibitions. During Milan’s design week, these will include an important retrospective on the work of Lella and Massimo Vignelli, and a look at British designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, two shows that we explore in this issue. They will be on display alongside a tribute to the late Andrea Branzi. The latter is staged in collaboration with the Cartier Foundation in Paris, whose director, Chris Dercon, we also cover in this edition of Anima.
It is one of the weaknesses of the Italian cultural system that public cultural appointments are political, shaped by whichever party is in command locally, regionally and nationally. Boeri’s role is one of them, and his second term expires this spring.
Lella and Massimo Vignelli are two of Italy’s most admired designers from the generation that emerged from the ruins of World War II. They saw design as an essential part of the construction of a new world, and believed in the radical, social and political agenda of the era.
Paradoxically they spent most of their working lives in the USA. They were founding members of Unimark, the briefly very successful agency that set the pattern for multinational commercial design consultancies. Unimark's first New York office was based in a rented space in Mies van der Rohe's newly completed Seagram Building. Employees were expected to wear white lab coats. But the Vignellis quickly decided that they were temperamentally unsuited to practice on this commercial scale. "We are not involved with persuasion," Massimo said. "We are involved with information."
With its citrus fruit salad of colour and its bold typography, the Vignellis’ work on the New York subway system redefined Manhattan in the 1970s. When the city was at its lowest ebb, threatened by bankruptcy and violent crime, the maps and the signage they designed for the decrepit network were an optimistic statement in the midst of all the decay, a glimpse of better times to come.
The subway map that the Vignellis and their collaborators produced in 1972 was actually a diagram – the most striking piece of public signage since Harry Beck had designed the London Underground map in 1933. The contrast between Beck, with his engineering background, earnest-looking in spectacles, and the suave Italians in collarless jackets, could not have been greater. London's map looked like a brilliant translation of a circuit board; New York's was a flamboyant work of art. But Beck's diagram is still in use, whereas that of the Vignellis disappeared after a few years.
The problem was that Central Park was not portrayed as the shape that it actually was, and that the map did not resemble the above-ground layout of New York. But that wasn't the point. Vignelli wanted to help travellers work out where to change trains, not to use the diagram to navigate the streets above. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority did not see it that way and replaced it in 1979.
The Vignellis took a stern approach to typography. It’s not true, as some claimed, that they used only one typeface, Helvetica, but Massimo did suggest that America used too many fonts and that four or five were quite enough. For Vignelli, it was not the decorative details that mattered: it was how you placed type, what you did with the space between and around the letters. He always saw himself as a modernist, but he loved Bodoni, a font that goes back to the 18th century.
Massimo Vignelli took aesthetic asceticism to the lengths of designing his own clothes. "A traditional jacket is made from 64 pieces; ours just used 10," he told his biographer. "And they came only in grey and black. Yes, it does make you look like a priest, but that's OK, it's a visual programme. We were not making fashion, which is transitory and based on the idea of obsolescence. We were making clothing with a purpose: to protect and follow the body. We grew tired of being fashion victims."
Bianca Saunders and Andu Masebo are both based in London, and work in very different fields. Saunders has a well-respected fashion label, Masebo makes furniture. But they both see their work in some sense as a reflection on their experiences of the city, and, like the Vignellis, they see design as primarily a cultural activity rather than a commercial one.
For Saunders, the clothes that she designs are a reflection of her own story and her Jamaican and British identities. “Dressing well and looking good is a big thing that my family prides themselves on. Even going to a small event it was a big deal to make sure we all looked our best in front of people. I definitely think that is a big part of Jamaican culture,” she told one interviewer. “I often think of my dad when it comes to buying quality clothes and shoes. He always stressed that it's better to have one thing well-made than to have many things that aren’t as good quality”.
Saunders has worked in media other than clothing to represent her ideas. She collaborated with the photographer Kwabena Sekyi Appiah-Nti, on 38 Love Lane, a book documenting her Jamaican heritage.
The Czech photographer Adam Štech heads to Mexico for this issue to look at the lesser-known aspects of Luis Barragán’s remarkable architecture. Barragán took his inspirations from many sources: the gardens of Moorish Spain, the artists he knew and worked with, and his memories of growing up in rural Mexico. His architecture has come to be seen as a physical expression of the country’s identity.
Christof Radl, art director for Ettore Sottsass’ magazine Terrazzo talks about his career to Italian curator Francesco Bonami, Dalia Al-Dujaili explores the legacy of Iraqi modernist graphic design, and Ayla Angelos reflects on the work of the late Martin Parr, the English photographer of daily life. Hella Jongerius discusses her pursuit of imperfection, and Anima visits one of the most radical modern houses of the 1970s, which is set to become part of Britain’s historic heritage.
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