The opening of the new ADI Design Museum offers the opportunity to celebrate the heritage that generated the world of objects and symbols through which today we recount Italian genius in the fields of design, graphics and architecture. The Compasso d’Oro Lifetime Achievement Award represents companies, institutions, authors and products. The goal is to pay homage to the finest names in Italian design of the twentieth century and emphasize their theoretical, visionary and social achievement.

The exhibition, which opens to the public on May 26 and of which this volume is the catalogue, recounts the Italy of design from a twofold viewpoint: transversal and democratic. It honors the history of cultured Italian professionalism and the noblest of design awards but at the same time is an opportunity to present a virtuous snapshot of the state of the art of contemporary Italian graphic design.

The curatorial choice involved big names from the ADI Design Index, together with a careful selection from the younger generation of designers.

Each has developed, interpreted and translated a Compasso d’Oro for Lifetime Achievement, in absolute freedom of expression, generating a collective and heterogeneous operation consisting of drawings, illustrations, collages and typographic posters. The contents and narrative strands are transcribed faithfully to the vision of the relevant Compass or reinterpreted and subverted with subtle irony. Through this exhibition ADI confirms its institutional and community role as the active memory for the defense and understanding of the heritage of Italian Industrial Design, becoming a place for meeting and engaging in a dialogue between the contemporary world and its masters.

The English translation is by Jon Cox.