Ico Migliore and Mara Servetto (Migliore + Servetto Architects) have carried out the curation and the exhibition design for the exhibition “Achille Castiglioni and brothers. Master of Italian Design”, at the Hangaram Art Museum in the Seoul Arts Center (SAC) in Seoul (South Korea). The exhibition has been organised by Project Collective Ltd. and Artmining and has the patronage of the Embassy of Italy to the Republic of Korea and it is supported by the Italian Cultural Institute in Seoul and the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture. The partners and institutions supporting the exhibition are KonaCard, Hyundai Department Store, Duomo&co., a.tempo, rooming, Focusis and Lighting News.
The exhibition is being promoted in collaboration with the Achille Castiglioni Foundation. Active in Milan since 2011 on the initiative of the family’s heirs, the Foundation preserves and passes on the memory of Achille and his brothers, sharing it with the public through a variety of initiatives and guided visits. “Achille Castiglioni and brothers” aims to investigate the contemporary nature and value of the lesson imparted by the Castiglioni brothers, Milanese architects and designers who were key figures in the history of design internationally. The curators Ico Migliore and Mara Servetto were Achille Castiglioni’s pupils at the Politecnico di Torino, then his assistants at the Politecnico di Milano.
This closeness gave them the opportunity to share Castiglioni’s project vision, which they have been developed later. The exhibition is held within a space measuring more than 1000m2 and investigates the private side of Achille Castiglioni and his brothers Livio and Pier Giacomo, delving into their family life and the activities of their studio, as well as the cultural dynamics that characterised Italy in those years. The curation thus seeks to reflect the originality of their design vision, which generated objects that have been consecrated as true design icons over time, and which profoundly influenced the development of design on a global scale. 58 years of career, 67 awards, more than 1000 projects in the fields of industrial design, installation and architecture: these are just some of the numbers relating to Achille Castiglioni. The first room presents them all through sequences of light and overlapping graphic displays, introducing visitors to the world of the Castiglioni brothers. With the second room, we enter into the heart of the Milanese context, the privileged site of the brothers’ experiments, which is explored from the 1950s onwards.
Different clusters of stories to explore – one on the family, one on the studio and one on collaborations with other designers and companies – outline a path where the common thread is the research carried out by the Castiglionis in constant dialogue with a society in a state of evolution. Achille and his brothers positioned themselves as attentive observers and interpreters of this society, in order to grasp and foresee its emerging needs. The third room is conceived as a large Wunderkammer dedicated to the Castiglionis’ creative process in the field of design and installation.
