To the edge of matter. An unforgettable journey. Milan

Exhibition.
Curatorship.
Environmental Graphics.
Video.

MEET Digital Culture Center. Viale Vittorio Veneto 2. Milan / April 2024/ NEUTRA

The exhibition designed for NEUTRA – for which the studio oversees the creative direction – on the occasion of Milano Design Week 2024 is a journey into matter, between physical and virtual.
An immersive story of matter – marble, stone and metal – animates and transforms into a narrative landscape, shaping a perceptive journey that offers a new way of understanding materials, through a constant zooming in and out.
The outcome is a synaesthetic experience where the uniqueness of each material becomes the narrative thread of NEUTRA’s partnership with eight internationally renowned designers – atelier oï, Draw Studio, Foster + Partners, Gabriele and Oscar Buratti, Mario Bellini, Migliore+Servetto, Nespoli e Novara, and Zaha Hadid Architects, who express the company’s vision with furnishings for the living and bathroom areas.
An immersive journey unfolds across five distinct scenarios, each offering a different perspective to delve into the unique visual and auditory landscapes embedded within matter. On the ground floor, a dynamic skyline develops across nine screens. This serves as a backdrop to showcase the works of Zaha Hadid Architects emphasising the fragments and details of matter.
Ascending to the first floor, there is the first gallery – New Marble Landscapes. This space plays host to furnishings designed by Foster + Partners, Mario Bellini, and Migliore+Servetto, presented in a new dimension where marble seamlessly blends with the surrounding landscape to evoke fresh inspirations. A matter scanner invites visitors to probe the marble’s permeable organic nature. Each layer reveals the essence of matter to the visitor’s gaze.
The following space, The Matter Archive, is a cabinet of curiosities dedicated to the legacy of marble and materials. It opens to reveal unseen items designed by Gabriele and Oscar Buratti and Migliore+Servetto. Small fragments of material in a wall archive, much like custodians of memories, tell stories about the showcased objects and enhance their collective identity. Macro lenses allow visitors to examine their innermost details, revealing marble stratifications that resemble episodes of a surreal landscape.
The mirror is the centrepiece of the third gallery: The Mirroring Effect is focused on Migliore+Servetto and Nespoli e Novara furnishings. Here, a play of reflections and viewpoint reversals blur the lines between observer and observed, expanding the scene to the point of rarefying its boundaries. Two sloping wings usher the visitor into a hybrid realm straddling the physical and digital, where liquid projections blend with the physicality of marble.
To the Edge of Matter marks the exhibition’s zenith. In the last gallery, a boundless lunar landscape unfolds, where an immersive video installation is the pivot of the layout and greets visitors into an alternative dimension, prompting them to reconsider their relationship with time and space. The digital installation is composed of contrasts and layers. This interacts with the Draw Studio and atelier oï furnishings, and plays a continuous shift of scale, sketching a digital landscape, originating from diverse worlds and undiscovered scenarios, to encourage us to ponder on the role of matter and observe how its perception changes according to the viewpoints.
A bespoke sound system adds to a highly sensory experience within a boundless environment, enabled by the new possibilities offered by multimedia. The goal is to give matter a voice and tune into the flow of narratives it harbours. As part of the creative direction for NEUTRA, one of the outcomes of the studio’s research was a collaboration with the sound artist NEUNAU (Sergio Maggioni) for this event.
A polyphonic symphony vivifies the installation and sets a rhythm of pauses and emphases to highlight the qualities of each piece of furniture, which is the product of meticulous planning. This encompasses the exclusive value of each material and the distinctiveness of individual items, crafted into a design that celebrates every detail and feature, without compromising cultural sustainability.
Underlining, remeasuring and codes alternate in the digital narrative that interprets furnishings as elements of a periodic table, in subtle connection with minimalist graphics that create an additional understanding of space, defining new volumes and perceptions.

Photo by Andrea Martiradonna