Milan’s Triennale Museum 24th Exhibition Explores Inequalities

MILAN — From cities to spaces and from bodies to lives, Triennale di Milano museum president Stefano Boeri stressed Monday that everyone is born unequal.

The museum’s 24th International Exhibition, which has taken place every three years since 1923, invited countries and artists, architects, researchers and designers around the world to showcase examples supporting the main theme.

With contributions from 43 countries, the exhibition explores themes such as solutions to the housing crisis with “Towards an Equal Future,” urban inequality with “Cities” and the relationship between architecture and microbiology with an installation called “We the Bacteria.”

The exhibition path of “Cities” opened here Monday with one of the most unforgettable examples of inequalities, the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy in London in 2017, with an installation curated and narrated by Grenfell Next of Kin. It then unfolds across video, photos, models, installations and even patchwork quilts by the Grenfell Memorial Quilts community, with tributes to those who were killed. The installation highlights how 85 percent of the victims belonged to ethnic minorities.

“We speak to ghettos and wars: the most extreme manifestations of inequality so rigid and profoundly unjust that they become instruments of cruelty and even death,” Boeri said.

On the first floor of the museum, an exhibit highlights the aging process. Curated by Nic Palmarini, director of the U.K. National Innovation Centre for Ageing, and Marco Sammicheli, director of the Italian design museum Museo del Design Italiano of Triennale Milano, “The Republic of Longevity” emphasizes the need for systemic change, focusing specifically on the possibilities for an aging population.

“We have a longer life compared to our parents and grandparents…, but we have much more cases of cancer and diseases,” said Sammicheli, during a preview, pointing to books on longevity and a shelving system designed by late designer James Irvine. The shelves house mementos that tell the story of him and his widow, architect Marialaura Irvine, who continues his legacy and Studio Irvine.

“The Republic of Longevity” is divided into five key dimensions that promote healthy aging: eating and drinking healthily, sleeping well, staying active, keeping the mind engaged and supported by a purpose, and cultivating meaningful social connections.

Elsewhere “Tiamat,” created for the Design Doha biennial in Qatar, explored new ways of using stone in contemporary architecture, as evidenced by arches around the Middle East. The latest evolution of Stone Matters, a research project by Bethlehem-based Aau Anastas founded by Elias and Yousef Anastas, and which collaborates with Palestinian artisans, promotes responsible quarrying and resilient city-building in response to widespread destruction.

Running through Nov. 9, the exhibition features 20 National Pavilions special projects by American artist and professor Theaster Gates, architectural historian Beatriz Colomina, the Norman Foster architectural foundation and Swiss curator and critic Hans Ulrich Obrist

The last International Exhibition took place in 2022. The 23^rd International Exhibition was titled “Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries” and included a series of projects curated by astrophysicist Ersilia Vaudo and Burkinabè architect and 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Francis Kéré, among others.