B5378 - Lab - Exhibition Design (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

Students acquire the main skills to develop an exhibition design and to integrate the project with theoretical and critical knowledge. In particular, they acquire the tools to define a conceptual project in specific exhibition spaces and they develop a personal vision on the principles, criteria and objectives to be achieved during the various research phases. Students also acquire the methodological basis for the graphic and technical representation and production of the exhibition display.

Course contents

In 1988, Sergio Polano published Mostrare. L'allestimento in Italia dagli anni Venti agli anni Ottanta, one of the first and most important Italian texts to offer a systematic and critical history of exhibition design. The book focuses exclusively on the Italian context, which at that time represented a leading environment of experimentation and avant-garde practice.

Mostrare is a pioneering work that traces the history of Italian exhibition design. It analyzes the evolution of exhibition-making as an autonomous artistic form, focusing on architects and designers who transformed exhibitions into narrative spaces. The book examines more than sixty years of art, architecture, and design exhibitions.

At a historical moment marked by increasing specialization and disciplinary separation, the book had the merit of highlighting a field that had until then been considered secondary to both architecture and graphic design—almost a technical service to curatorial activity.

The volume also restores visibility to the central—though rarely publicized—role of exhibition practice in the daily work of architects, whose built and theoretical works were at the core of contemporary debate.

Exhibition design is treated not as a mere frame, but as an active and critical “staging.” According to Giovanni Anceschi in Monogrammi e figure, exhibition design functions as both an ostensive prosthesis (expository, demonstrative, discursive, rhetorical) and an observational one (revealing and analytical): it allows us “to show others what they otherwise would not be able to see,” or rather, “what we otherwise would not be able to make them see.”

The central body of the book presents a non-exhaustive collection of exhibition works, organized in strict chronological order.

This intensive course aims to partially continue the work initiated by Polano, focusing on developments from the late 1980s to the present. The scope is extended to the international context, reflecting the gradual loss of centrality of the Italian context during that period.

The course is taught by Giovanni Piovene and Ambra Fabi, partners of the studio PIOVENEFABI (www.piovenefabi.it).

Readings/Bibliography

Condorelli, Céline (2009). Support Structures. Berlin: Sternberg Press.

Fabrizi, Mariabruna; Lucarelli, Fosco (2021). Database. Network. Interface. The Architecture of Information. Rome: Caryatide.

Formafantasma (2026). “On Exhibition Design.” Mousse Magazine. Available at:
https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/on-exhibition-design-formafantasma-2026

Hochuli, Jost (2003). Designing Books: Practice and Theory. London: Hyphen Press.

Müller-Brockmann, Josef (1999). Grid Systems in Graphic Design / Raster Systeme für die visuelle Gestaltung: A Visual Communication Manual for Graphic Designers, Typographers and Three-Dimensional Designers. Teufen: Arthur Niggli.

Polano, Sergio (2000). Mostrare. L’allestimento in Italia dagli anni Venti agli anni Ottanta. Lybra Immagine.

Tufte, Edward R. (1990). Envisioning Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.

Teaching methods

Lectures and workshop activities

Assessment methods

The exam consists of the development and presentation of a collective editorial and exhibition project. The final presentation takes place approximately one month after the end of the course. On this occasion, projects are presented before a committee composed of faculty members and external experts; this presentation constitutes the official evaluation.

1. Achievement of an organic and coherent vision of the project topic; mastery of appropriate disciplinary language; originality of analysis and reflections.

2. Ability to process and elaborate information.

3. Quality of the editorial organization of the produced material.

4. Graphic and material quality of the project.

5. Active participation in lectures and workshop activities.

Teaching tools

Course images and selected bibliography materials will be made available.

Office hours

See the website of Giovanni Alessandro Piovene Porto Godi