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Unifor 50th Anniversary
Art, culture and industry come together at Palazzo
di Brera for UniFor’s 50th anniversary. To look back
at five fundamental decades in the history of Italian
design, the Molteni Group has chosen a space
in the seventeenth-century Palazzo in via Brera in
Milan, the headquarters of key institutions for the city:
the Accademia di Belle Arti, Pinacoteca di Brera
and Biblioteca Braidense. The display is curated
by Fulvio Irace, and features a multimedia installation
by Ron Gilad. Accompanying the exhibition is the book
Una vocazione per l’architettura, published by Skira
with graphic design by Pierluigi Cerri. This draws
on UniFor’s hitherto unpublished archive to describe
its specific vision: the design of an interior landscape
that turns the ideas and requirements of contemporary
clients and architects into reality. UniFor grew
out of a family story. It was origianlly an idea of a
community, but it was also testament to the human
capital of technical experts, architects, designers,
graphic designers, photographers, and exceptionally
far-sighted, specialized, skilled, competent and
creative craftspeople. All have enabled the company
to establish itself as a synonym for elegance, reliability
and innovation in the definition of the Bürolandschaft
in the second machine age. The story began in the
1970s in Turate, where Angelo Mangiarotti designed
the first nucleus of the headquarters and the production
units, which gradually expanded with the growing
fortunes of the company. It was a model factory, where
production was kept in-house, allowing for an obsessive
attention to quality. In its classic simplicity, the
headquarters became a living manifesto for UniFor’s
corporate spirit. The following decades were to be
decisive: major overseas projects were accompanied
by collaborations with great names in architecture.
The book describes UniFor’s key features, highlighting
the absolute singularity of its working method.
It reconstructs the company’s identity by examining
certain exemplary moments, from UniFor’s collaborations
with leading designers and architects such as Michele
De Lucchi, Foster + Partners, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano,
Aldo Rossi, and Álvaro Siza, to its communication
strategy, with Pierluigi Cerri’s graphics acting as a tool
for unifying the company’s message through its
coordination of graphic identity and display systems.
Cerri’s showrooms and furniture fair stands exemplify,
in the three-dimensionality of the spaces, the concepts
of order, measure, functional elegance and innovation.
To convey UniFor’s corporate values, and its legacy
in the history of design, Ron Gilad has built his tribute
to UniFor’s 50th anniversary around the space curated
by Fulvio Irace, and in relation to the venue that is hosting
the multimedia installation, with its cultural and social
centrality to the life of Milan. The accompanying book
has been incorporated into the installation in the form of
a gigantic sculpture in the centre of the Cortile d’Onore,
opposite a statue of Napoleon. The sculpture is a bronze
cast based on a model by Antonio Canova, with a video
animation that reproduces the book’s pages, which are
turned by Josephine Bonaparte. The Last Supper, an
installation in the Sala Napoleonica, presents a number
of UniFor products, including the DCA system by
David Chipperfield and the Elements 03 table by Foster
+ Partners. They are animated by a live performance
by drama students from the Accademia di Brera inspired
by Leonardo’s celebrated fresco. Touchdown, the third
project forming the tribute, presents the new product
designed by Studio Klass in the Sala della Passione.
Here, a projection of a cartoon shows its potential,
and is accompanied by a sound environment created by
the students of the Accademia di Brera’s masters degree
in sound design. “I find many similarities in relating
the technical skills, engineering capacity and the refined
craftsmanship of an industrial company such as UniFor
with the intellectual and creative potential of an artist
or a performer,” says Ron Gilad. “Passion is the key”.
#UniFor50
by Francesca Molteni
Una vocazione
per l’architettura
A Commitment
to Architecture
Fulvio Irace
Installation
9 – 14 April 2019
Palazzo di Brera
via Brera 28
Milano
Monday – Saturday
10.00am – 21.00pm
Sunday
10.00am – 19.00pm
Tuesday 9 April
Cocktail Party
18.00 – 22.00
It was 1968, the year of great and definitive events that left their mark on consciences, cultures, populations,
lifestyles, and consumer habits. That year, the name of which became the symbol of an era, was many
things, including the ethics and aesthetics of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a cult film on the identity of man and
the role of knowledge, information access, and technology. In the midst of that cultural ferment, UniFor
was ready and prepared to welcome the internationality and centrality of design as the foundation of
development, in order to transform the visions of architects into public and private spaces, then objects,
and finally, icons. The power of coincidences. From our workshop/observatory, we have accompanied the
evolution of work throughout the world. We have dialogued with large corporations, with the contractors
who built the contemporary landscape – the metropolises and the manufacturing complexes that have
marked the economic history of the second half of the twentieth century – and with the architects, those
creators of the shapes and spaces that define functions and transmit meanings.
We have experienced, in these fifty years, the time of organized work and the time of destructured work
that expands into the personal sphere. We have witnessed the time of rigorous spatial layouts and the
time in which space defines new worlds for other, more articulated, affiliations. Museums, theaters,
libraries, and temporary installations have represented, with their demanding levels of technical,
mechanical, and symbolic innovation, challenging contexts in which to invest the district’s capital of
intellectual and artisanal skills. We have embraced the future within the walls designed for us by Angelo
Mangiarotti, and beyond those walls we have shared it with the intelligent supply chain that has permitted
UniFor to develop not so much products but solutions. This supply chain is emblematic of “Made in Italy,”
an approach based on the formal and informal know-how that has made the Brianza district a paradigm of
historical and contemporary intellectual capital.
UniFor with its networks, has been a world open to the world: for some it was a company, and for others,
a factory, an incubator of endless experiments that have translated the momentum of ideas and the
intelligence of function into efficient, beautiful, ergonomic, and distinctive forms. Everything took place in
a subtle and smart chemistry of trust, vision and organization, starting from a cultured, meticulous, and
passionate business community that is part of an industrial group made up of expertise, experience and
reputation. Before the projects and before production, the challenge has consisted in understanding how
to decipher the spirit of the times in order to interpret needs and desires, while at the same time
practicing virtuous environmental, economic, and social sustainability policies. We can never be thankful
enough for the commitment and dedication of all those who have assured exceptional engineering and
production, rigorous and incisive communication, quality of service, and managerial solidity. These fifty
years represent the value of a perspective to be lived and a story to be told. Thank you.
Piero and Carlo Molteni
