A Home for the Archive of Archives. Gregotti, Mari, and 40 Artists' Perspectives

and Massimiliano Mingoia

The “archive of archives ” of architects, designers, and graphic designers will finally have its own home in Milan . A home where you can browse the projects of Vittorio Gregotti and Luciano Baldessari , the Sambonet Collection, the drawings and prototypes of Enzo Mari , Nanda Vigo , and forty other artists and professionals who have left their mark on Milan and beyond, often interacting with each other. The archives are intertwined: rediscovering them in a single home can open up new horizons of research and surprises. The wait is (almost) over, the date is circled in red: September 30th. The headquarters of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts will open its doors in Qt8 , the experimental neighborhood designed by Pietro Bottoni . It will be housed in the old municipal market on Via Isernia, at the foot of Monte Stella . Marino Marini 's Donnina di Milano is also returning to the same location, and the archive of photographer Carla De Benedetti has just arrived from America. "This is where 45 archives of Italian design culture will find a home," emphasizes Culture Councilor Tommaso Sacchi . "A precious heritage of drawings, prototypes, documents, and visions, which conveys an urban history made up of ideas, relationships, and experiments." A dream that began to take shape in 1999, from the meeting between Alessandra Mottola Molfino and Zita Mosca Baldessari , who wanted to find a place in Milan where they could preserve and collect iconographic sources for the study of visual arts in the Milanese area. The first steps were taken in 2002, followed by the launch of the activity, involving consultations with scholars, events, and publications. In 2017, the project for a new headquarters was conceived by the working group of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Polytechnic , led by architect Mariella Brenna . The project was then optimized in 2021 by architects Walter Patscheider and Corrado Serafini of " Architetti per Milano ," entrusted to MM and funded by the City of Milan with €9.1 million to achieve the goal of exhibiting and preserving a unique heritage. The new 3,000-square-meter space, on the ground floor, will feature classrooms open to citizens, students, and associations, a bookshop, a café, and a multifunctional space of over 500 square meters. The beating heart of the project is in the basement, where—spreading across over 1,000 square meters—the Casva treasures, previously housed at the Sforza Castle , will be conserved. Some collections previously housed at the Fabbrica del Vapore or held by private individuals, awaiting completion of the works, will also be located at Qt8 . "The new Casva Milano will not only be a research center, but also a space for study and discussion open to the city," Sacchi reiterates. "A place where design becomes a tool for interpreting the present and imagining the future. We will restore, reclaimed, an important space for Qt8 , with a new cultural function that will foster social interaction and aggregation." In anticipation of the Casva , festivals have also sprung up: " M'incanto " is underway, which on August 29th—right in the courtyard on Via Isernia—will host Isole d'Acqua , a playable installation, and the puppet theater " Qua quaattacco là ."