“Feeling Good. Caimi design for the Future” is a non-celebratory exhibition that proposes a narrative focus on the company, which aspires to draw a line in the direction, a new path, contributing to the development of the Made in Italy design system. On show at the ADI Design Museum will therefore be a cultural project focusing on the design reformism of a Made in Italy icon, between science, design, art and business.
Curated by Aldo Colonetti, a philosopher, historian and theorist of art and design, and architect and researcher Valentina Fisichella, the exhibition offers visitors an articulated itinerary in synaesthetic environments hosting objects, videos, works of art, products, documents and drawings. The exhibition design by architect Matteo Vercelloni develops the exhibition in multiple dimensions and forms to enrich the visitor experience, which also includes multimedia aspects and live performances by the Ex Anima collective.
The itinerary thus restores that contamination between industrial design and art, between science and design that is a constitutive aspect of Caimi, which from its very beginnings has moved within a reformist project, reflecting in non-ideological or revolutionary terms around the great themes that characterise the contemporaneity of our world.
In fact, beyond products and documents, the project is a story of ideas, illustrated not only in the exhibition but also in a book and a podcast dedicated to the themes and actors in the brand’s history: entrepreneurs, designers, researchers, artists, communicators. Many speeches and points of view of the curators and protagonists flow into the narrative, helping to trace the evolution of the company and its family history, which now boasts seventy-five years of design culture and social life.
A series of previously unpublished testimonies trace the narrative of an activity that has gone from the invention and production of simple but famous objects (the schiscetta, the Lombard name for the hermetically sealed container that allowed workers to safely take their meals with them on their way to work), to the most heartfelt needs of today’s home and office life: protecting comfort, health and aesthetics at the same time through efficient and versatile acoustic and electromagnetic absorption.
This beautiful tale of design and entrepreneurship is characterised by a common thread: the focus on science and its applications, which has seen the creation of a research centre – Caimi OpenLab – created for the company, but immediately made available to universities, research institutes and foundations wishing to use tools to investigate the contemporary reality of acoustics.
The title Feeling good summarises the great coherence of Caimi’s history, which has always been oriented towards the design and production of feasible projects that respond to real needs and, above all, aim at the user’s well-being and comfort.
Feeling Good
Caimi design for the future
5 – 28 April 2024
ADI Design Museum
Piazza Compasso d’Oro 1, Milan
Exhibition curated by Aldo Colonetti and Valentina Fisichella
Exhibition design: Matteo Vercelloni
Multimedia project and live performance: Ex Anima
Production: ADI Design Museum – Compasso d’Oro
Catalogue edited by Aldo Colonetti, Valentina Fisichella, Luciano Galimberti
