127 OSVALDO BORSANI ONE SUMMER LONG AGO

His grandson Tommaso rolls back the years and talks about his grandfather, one of the most important designers of the 20th century. TheMilan Triennale is celebrating him with an exhibition

You could easily walk past Villa Borsani and not see it. It’s hidden among the big fir trees in the garden, immersed in the silence of a provincial town that is a eulogy to slowness. Varedo is a small municipality north of Milan in the Brianza, and was the birthplace of one of the most important designers of the 20th century, Osvaldo Borsani. «He built this house in the 1940s for his father Gaetano» explains Tommaso Fantoni, Osvaldo’s grandson, who is keeping the family history alive today by looking after his grandfather’s archive. «After Gaetano died it passed to his brother Fulgenzio. Now my cousin lives in it, so even though he’s not there every day, it’s still inhabited». So, this house of many marvels, considered to be one of the jewels of modern architecture, has always been occupied by the Borsani family and no-one else. Seemingly suspended between imagination and reality, it’s like a casket that holds something precious. The entrance gate opens to reveal the portrait of an epoch; were it not for the garden in full flower, and the perfume of spring in the air, it might seem as if time had come to a stop here. Tommaso, a 40-something architect whose practice is called Tomoarchitects, takes us back in time: « I used to spend my summers here. I was ten when Osvaldo died. He had a strong, deep, kind, decisive voice and knew how to make people listen to him. I remember that there was a constant coming and going; people were always calling in to see him». Osvaldo used to enjoy conversing at length in the company of people like Gio Ponti, Arnaldo and Giò Pomodoro, Ugo Mulas, Roberto Crippa, Aligi Sassu, Fausto Melotti, Agenore Fabbri, and Lucio Fontana: friends and excellent collaborators who, like himself, left their mark in museums all over the world, from MoMa in New York to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Milan Triennale. This year the Triennale will be hosting the first large retrospective exhibition dedicated to Borsani, which will run from 16 May to 16 September: «it’s something we’d been wanting to do for such a long time» says Tommaso, who worked with archistar Norman Foster for ten years. It was Tommaso who wiped the (metaphorical) dust off the creative treasure left by Borsani, and curated the exhibition. «There will also be a monograph with text by Giampiero Bosoni, published by Skira. We had to put in quite an effort to select what to include in the exhibition» he says. «The very last product my grandfather put into production with Tecno, the company he set up in 1953 with his twin brother Fulgenzio, was Norman Foster’s Nomos table, which won the ADI Compasso d’Oro Prize in 1987». Villa Borsani will be open to the public for the whole duration of the exhibition (by appointment only; write to rsvp@osvaldoborsani.com), and is an obligatory visit for anyone wanting to have a complete picture of this outstanding personality, who was a pioneer of the union between craft and industry, aesthetics and engineering. Its interiors have become a testimony to Osvaldo Borsani’s world. Nothing about it is excessive, and nothing has been left to chance; there’s an unusual sobriety and composure in every room. Thanks to the Casa Libera! project curated by Ambra Medda during the Salone del Mobile (Milan’s DesignWeek) the design world has already been able to have a preview visit and get to know his work better, by seeing his drawings, watercolours, photographs, and letters, and admiring every aspect of the villa. These include a chimneypiece decorated by Lucio Fontana, sculptures by Agenore Fabbri, paintings by Spilimbergo, and a staircase in Candoglia marble and glass: details and works of art that all fit in perfectly as company for the furniture from the first atelier in Varedo and the design pieces that were born under the Tecno brand name. Although this is a house that hasn’t moved on and has none of the latest domotic home automation, everything still feels brand new; it remains a timeless indicator that describes a superhero of design who was able to resist the passing fashions of his time. Tommaso says «a hundred years have passed, give or take, since the Borsani family began to make furniture». The Triennale exhibition will include about 300 pieces of furniture and more than 400 images describing the whole career of the maestro, including the Graphis modular system, which was first presented in 1968 and completely changed the thinking about office furniture. That was a time of revolutionary utopia: an authentic social, political, and philosophical explosion that began in Paris and affected many other parts

of Europe. The protests also reached Milan: on the opening day of the 14th Triennale exhibition, the building was occupied by students and artists. «Legend has it that during the occupation they jumped up on my grandfather Osvaldo’s benches and made a mess of his worktables. But afterwards when they were cleaned and put back in place, they still looked as good as new, having passed that very challenging spontaneous test ». Even for a revolutionary architect like Osvaldo Borsani, that was a decidedly turbulent baptism.