Must See Design Masters during the Milan Design Week
As we eagerly anticipate the start of the world’s most renowned design event, reflecting on the era preceding the Salone del Mobile is intriguing. Designers of that time devoted their lives to observing the world and striving to enhance individual experiences. They refined daily gestures creating objects, welcoming spaces, and envisioning cities with a profound love for community and creative interaction.
These six figures (Achille Castiglioni, Aldo Rossi, Franco Albini, Gio Ponti, Gae Aulenti and Vico Magistretti) are now almost mythical. They were all passionate humans who infused their lives with beauty and revolutionary ideas, from which we continue to draw inspiration.
Below are some of the most significant addresses that narrate the stories of these great visionaries.
These personalities continue to live through their buildings, objects, and publications, helping us admire the past with a progressive spirit.
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Legacy of Design Masters | Achille Castiglioni Foundation
The Ironic and Ingenious Legacy of Italian Design Master
“Design is not about aesthetics. It’s about ethics.”
This quote encapsulates the designer’s moral commitment to creating functional, intelligent, and responsible objects.
Achille Castiglioni was one of the most brilliant Italian designers of the 20th century, known for his ironic genius and love for functional simplicity. Castiglioni had the ability to view everyday objects through fresh, playful eyes, leaving anmnenduring mark on the world of design. His most famous quotes reveal a curious, deeply human spirit and joyful creativity.
Right in the heart of Milan, just across from the Castello Sforzesco, lies a space that tells the story of this design master: the Studio Museum of Achille Castiglioni.
In 2011, the architect’s family signed an agreement with the Triennale di Milano to open his historic studio to the public, transforming it into a captivating museum. Since then, it has welcomed over 89,000 visitors worldwide (as of 2024).
Driven by a desire to protect and celebrate Castiglioni’s extraordinary creative legacy, the Achille Castiglioni Foundation opened in 2014. Its mission is clear: to catalog, digitize, and share the vast archive accumulated over more than sixty years of work—first in collaboration with his brother Pier Giacomo, and later independently. The archive includes drawings, photographs, models, films, lectures, design objects, and publications.
Explore Castiglioni’s studio, a workshop where the ordinary became extraordinary. Guided tours showcase iconic designs and his creative process, making him a design legend
Every year, the Foundation continues to honor his legacy with temporary exhibitions and cultural initiatives, keeping his vision alive: a design for people—simple, functional, and full of wit.
📍 Where: Achille Castiglioni Foundation, Piazza Castello 27, Milan, Italy
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Legacy of Design Masters | Aldo Rossi Foundation
Memory, Form, and the Thought of a Poetic Architect
“To build is to remember.”
Aldo Rossi was one of the most influential architects and theorists of 20th-century Italy. He was known for his profound and poetic reflections on architecture, memory, and the city. His words often transform the built environment into a vessel for collective memory.
In Milan, the Aldo Rossi Foundation preserves the intellectual and creative universe of this master of Italian architecture. Built and curated over time by Rossi himself, the archive is a chronological journey through his projects, containing a wealth of material: competition briefs, sketches, technical drawings, models, photographs, and documents. Each element reveals his theoretical meditations on the essence of form and the soul of cities.
Established in 2005 by his heirs, the Foundation’s mission is to conserve, catalog, and enhance this extraordinary legacy. In addition to architectural works, it houses writings, notes, photographs, and rare editorial materials, many of which remain unpublished. Visiting or researching the archive means entering a laboratory of thought where architecture meets philosophy, art, and literature. It is a place where rigor meets poetry, and form becomes storytelling.
📍 Location: Aldo Rossi Foundation, Viale Ungheria 24 – Milan, Italy
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Legacy of Design Masters | Franco Albini Foundation
Where Rigor Becomes a Form of Poetry
“One must approach Design with honesty, clarity, and respect for people.”
In the heart of Milan, the Franco Albini Foundation is a vibrant space where the visionary thinking of one of the founding figures of Italian design continues to unfold.
Established to preserve, study, and share the legacy of architect and designer Franco Albini, the Foundation holds a remarkable collection of drawings, projects, photographs, furniture, objects, and archival materials born from decades of work across architecture, urban planning, and design.
A pioneer of Italian Rationalism, Albini combined technical rigor with a subtle lyrical touch. From his floating bookshelves to the Milan Metro trains, his creations blend precision, purpose, and timeless beauty. The Foundation conserves this legacy and promotes Albini’s method and ethics through exhibitions, guided tours, workshops, publications, and educational activities.
Located in his original studio, the Foundation welcomes visitors, researchers, and design lovers, offering direct access to the daily processes of Albini and his collaborators. It is a place where design is not merely form but thought—and responsibility.
📍 Location: Franco Albini Foundation, Via Telesio 13 – Milan, Italy
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Legacy of Design Masters | Gio Ponti Archives
Where Art Becomes the Most Enduring Material
“Love architecture, be happy, make others happy.”
Gio Ponti was one of the most versatile and influential figures in 20th-century Italian design and architecture. Architect, designer, artist, and founder of Domus magazine, he left behind a legacy rich in vision, innovation, and critical thought. Much like his creations, his words are rich in elegance, irony, and intelligence.
In the creative heart of Milan, Ponti’s lightness, elegance, and vision continue to shine like pencil strokes on paper in the Gio Ponti Archives, located in his original studio on Via Dezzo.
The archive is not an ordinary one: it is a living laboratory of memory—a constellation of ideas, images, and objects that illuminate the multifaceted universe of this design maestro. It began as a labor of love by his daughter, Lisa Ponti, who meticulously collected and organized photographic materials. It has since grown thanks to the ongoing efforts of Salvatore Licitra, who has curated and expanded the collection since 1996.
Today, the archive serves as a dynamic and evolving database, housing architectural projects, design objects, writings, magazines, photographs, and rare unpublished materials—spanning over fifty years of creativity from the 1920s to the 1970s.
But beyond preservation, the Gio Ponti Archives interpret, connect, and reignite. They document Ponti’s genius across architecture, industrial design, graphics, communication, and art, forming a fluid, ever-changing path through one of the most fertile eras in Italian culture.
Casa Gio Ponti – Via Dezza, Milano
📍 Location: Via Dezzo 49 – Milan, Italy
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Legacy of Design Masters | Gae Aulenti Archive
Where Architecture Gives Voice to Our Time
“There is no such thing as architecture for women or men. There is just architecture.”
Gae Aulenti was one of the most charismatic and influential voices in Italian architecture and design of the 20th century. She brought a critical, cultured, and deeply human approach to every project. Gae Aulenti is rnowned for her visionary work in museums, public spaces, furniture, and urban design.
In the quiet, timeless streets of Brera, Milan, her former home studio now houses the Gae Aulenti Archive—a precious repository of thoughts, forms, and creative gestures from a woman who left a luminous and indelible mark on the history of architecture.
Established in 2012 by her family, the archive holds more than 700 projects, forming a sweeping journey through buildings, museums, piazzas, lamps, stage sets, furniture, and visionary urban plans. It’s a vast, compelling body of work that reflects Aulenti’s interdisciplinary spirit, seamlessly transitioning from art to engineering, from domestic detail to monumental scale.
The drawings, photographs, videos, and documents preserved here are living traces of a restless, cultured, radically modern mind. Born in 1927 in Palazzolo dello Stella and raised between Florence and Turin during the war, Aulenti graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1953. Her path evolved into a synthesis of art, architecture, and narrative, sharpened during her formative years at Casabella-Continuità under Ernesto Nathan Rogers.
Among her most celebrated works are the transformation of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Museum of Catalan Art in Barcelona, and the restoration of Palazzo Grassi in Venice—along with iconic design pieces such as the Pipistrello lamp for Martinelli Luce and the Table with Wheels for FontanaArte.
Today, the Archive is not just a place of preservation but a bridge between past and future, between the silence of drawing and the vitality of design. It invites us to rediscover the gaze of a woman who knew how to filter the light of her time and gift it to future generations.
📍 Location: Gae Aulenti Archive, Via Fiori Oscuri 3 – Milan, Italy
Gae Aulenti’s former living room in Milan
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Legacy of Design Masters | Vico Magistretti
The Elegance of Thought, the Simplicity of the Line
“Drawing is a way of thinking.”
In the heart of Milan, in a studio where ideas took shape under soft light and the rhythm of pencil on paper, Vico Magistretti’s vision still lives on.
Founded in 2010, the Vico Magistretti Studio Museum Foundation is more than a place of conservation—it is a creative memory space, an invitation to rediscover the ironic intelligence, formal clarity, and poetic functionality of one of the great masters of Italian design.
Housed in the original studio where Magistretti worked throughout his life, the Foundation preserves an archive that tells the story of over sixty years of design from 1946 to 2006. Through freehand sketches, technical drawings, photographs, and personal correspondence, we glimpse a fluid, brilliant design process—capable of transforming a single idea into an object, always with people at the center.
The archive shows Magistretti’s work with leading Italian design firms, many still supporting the Foundation.
Between memory and vision, the studio is now open to researchers, students, professionals, and curious visitors, physically at Via Vincenzo Bellini 1 and digitally through an evolving and richly detailed online archive.
📍 Location: Vico Magistretti Studio Museum Foundation, Via Vincenzo Bellini 1 – Milan, Italy
Don’t Miss :::: Superrgiù Exhibition at the Fondazione Vico Magistretti – From April 3rd, 2025 to February 26th, 2026
