VOGUE LIVING VIEW
This proud and passionate country was hit hard by the pandemic, but its spirit never wavered By Emanuele Farneti
There are two stories that I’d like to mention here as they can help you understand my country. These two stories certainly don’t deny Italy’s many problems, or liberate us Italians from the more or less merited clichés: our delays, red tape, corruption, political instability, individualism and cynicism. However, these stories do illustrate our ability to rise up when everything, or nearly everything, seems lost. The first story tells of a road, and the second of a trade fair.
In May 1956, Italy was still in ruins, devastated by Fascism and the bombs of World War II. Huge numbers of Italians emigrated to Germany and Belgium, only to perish in the mines, and to North and South America. Centuries of history divided Italy’s industrial North from its agricultural South, with thousands of towns that had never really been part of a single state. There wasn’t even a road linking us together, but that road was necessary to travel the land quickly from the North to the South. Moreover, Italy needed a symbol of unity and rebirth. When roadworks began on May 19, there wasn’t a stretch of asphalt ready, nor a unified project, funding or even the professional skills needed. And yet eight years, 755 kilometres, 113 bridges and viaducts, 572 flyovers, 38 tunnels and 57 junctions later, the so-called Autostrada del Sole (literally “Sun Motorway”) was inaugurated — built with a still unbeaten average of 94 kilometres of finished road per year, crossing some of the world’s most arduous terrain. In every section, from Milan ››
‹‹ to Naples, over plains and mountains, groups of Italians joined forces and endeavoured to build their stretch of highway by their own means, spanning rivers and valleys, even working over Christmas and New Year. For the first time arguably since the Roman Empire, a single straight road united different communities in a common national sentiment. This spontaneous feat of engineering was so extraordinary that it was celebrated with an exhibition at New York City’s MoMA, inaugurated on June 30, 1964, celebrating “the most beautiful highway in the world”.
Milan, one year later. A narrow entrance at the Fiera Campionaria exhibition centre led from Pavilion 29 to Pavilion 30 on the third floor. The Furniture Fair had been launched four years earlier on a sweltering day in September. But it was in 1965 that the miracle happened, in that third-floor space where nobody wanted to end up. A generation of ageing furniture makers opened the doors of their factories to the “new kids” of design. Those entrepreneurs from the Brianza region were men of the previous century, and they didn’t understand all the modernity that was knocking at the door. But they did realise that it represented the way to the future — their own futures, that of design and, why not, of the entire country. In period photos you can see them looking at tables and chairs with admiration and bewilderment — there was a palpable jet lag between the people and the objects. Pavilion 30 saw the opening of stands mounted by Cassina, Boffi, Bernini, Poltronova, Kartell, Frau, Tecno, Molteni... Among other things, it was the year of Gae Aulenti’s Pipistrello lamp, and the radio that opens in two: the TS502 by Richard Sapper and Marco Zanuso for Brionvega. Attendance numbers increased in the wake of that intuition — that encounter between age-old know-how and modern vision — with visitors and exhibitors also starting to flood in from abroad. In the year of the first fair, exports accounted for 0.2 per cent of the total, and now they were poised to become 20 times that figure. The Furniture Fair was born, and over the years it would grow to become the most important event of its kind in the world.
As I write these words, the streets of Milan are deserted, precisely during the days when the city was supposed to be crowded for Salone del Mobile’s 60th edition. And the Autostrada del Sole is registering the lowest traffic flows in its history.
But at the end of this suspended time, when all this suffering and silence is over, I know we’ll be able to get back on our feet. We’ll work together, as we do when we have no alternative, and we’ll work hard. I know that next year our streets will once again welcome that great celebration of design and creativity. And we’ll do it with all the same traffic, bustle and sensation as before. Or almost. But the important thing is that it will be even more beautiful to meet and embrace you all again.
“I know that next year our streets will once again welcome that great CELEBRATION of design and creativity”