After its debut at the Bröhan Museum in Berlin, Alchimia. The Revolution of Italian Design arrives in Milan, the city where Studio Alchimia first took shape in the mid-1970s.
This is the first comprehensive retrospective dedicated to the collective, founded in 1976 by Alessandro and Adriana Guerriero and active until 1992.
The Milan edition features a new exhibition design by Alessandro Guerriero, conceived as an immersive environment that captures the group’s utopian and experimental spirit.
At the center of the installation is a suspended platform referred to as a tappetozattera, a “carpet-raft” that invites visitors to engage in a symbolic crossing of the everyday, echoing the visionary character that defined Alchimia’s approach.
Rather than a conventional display of objects, the exhibition is framed as an experience that reflects on a moment in Italian design shaped by experimentation, irony, and creative freedom.
Emerging during a period of profound social and cultural change, Studio Alchimia operated as a multidisciplinary workshop where design intersected with visual art, architecture, fashion, music, and performance.
Rejecting the rationalist and industrial aesthetics that dominated the era, the group developed what they called the theory of banal design, assigning the project a narrative, symbolic, and critical function.
The retrospective brings together more than 150 works, including objects, furniture, sketches, photographs, canvases, and videos, charting the collective’s evolution and its influence on contemporary visual culture.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 400-page trilingual catalogue, edited by François Burkhardt and Tobias Hoffmann, co-published by the Bröhan Museum and the ADI Design Museum.
Exhibition Title: Alchimia. The Revolution of Italian Design
Venue: ADI Design Museum, Milan, Italy
Dates: 11 November 2025 – 22 January 2026
Curators: François Burkhardt, Tobias Hoffmann
Exhibition Design: Alessandro Guerriero
Website: adidesignmuseum.org
