INTERNI, the Mondadori Group’s interiors and contemporary design magazine edited by Gilda Bojardi, presents XXX-Y 30 YEARS OF THE FUORISALONE, a book published by Electa that celebrates the most memorable designs, personalities and events that have characterised the creation and development of an event that is a symbol of the city of Milan. The story begins with the origins as the “Milano Designer’s Week” created in 1990 by Gilda Bojardi and INTERNI, which evolved and adopted the name FuoriSalone (also invented by the magazine’s editor) which then led to the explosion of temporary districts and its position as an authentic urban festival.

In 512 pages, 1000 images and the designs of over 2500 protagonists, the book covers the history of the most important event in the world of international design.

“It’s not enough to use the equation Design = Milano to understand the success of an event as unique as the FuoriSalone,” declared Gilda Bojardi, editor of INTERNI. “As the book explains, created 30 years after the first event which, on our initiative, structurally involved many of Milan’s key design locations, the FuoriSalone is a choral effort with a great number of protagonists involving a range of historical factors, geographic, productive and cultural. It is, in fact, the expression of a system that only in Italy, and only in Milan, could find such fertile ground. From 1990 to the present, the event has continued to grow, overcoming, both in terms of cultural vivacity and experimentation, the limits of an exhibition-market to become an exceptional urban festival that visitors, regardless of their professional interests, experience as an important spectacular and unmissable cross-cultural happening. The knock-on economic impact is such as to make it the most important week of the year for the city and, together with the Salone del Mobile – to which it is complementary – makes Milan the ideal place for the diffusion of a culture that places design at the heart of debates regarding innovation and the progress of society,” concluded the editor.

The book brings to life the various stages of its development and the most emblematic events that has marked the history of the FuoriSalone – a spectacular cultural and market model, copied around the world, based on a successful mix of performance, installations, and experimental exhibitions and expressions – and enabled Milan to become the recognised capital of international design.

The story is told chronologically and divided by decades (1990-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2019), introduced by a chapter on the 1980s, and specifically the events that led to the creation of the FuoriSalone. Written by four leading design critics (Beppe Finessi, Deyan Sudjic, Paolo Ferrarini and Li Edelkoort) the book offers a general and personal account of the phenomenon, its evolution and significance. The decades, meanwhile, benefit from a historical and sociological introduction by university professor and scholar Andrea Davide Cuman, who tells the story of the event in relation to the evolution of taste and the transformations of the city.

The range of images – drawn from the INTERNI archives – is accompanied by contributions from around  50 personalities who with their first-hand accounts, memories and anecdotes, describe ‘their’ FuoriSalone: from the inventors of the big events that formed the basis for the FuoriSalone – such as Giulio Cappellini, Paolo Pallucco, Patrizia Moroso – to designers that created unforgettable installations – including Ron Arad, Andrea Branzi, Michele De Lucchi, Jacopo Foggini, Barnaba Fornasetti, Massimo Iosa Ghini, Antonio Marras, Fabio Novembre, William Sawaya and Paolo Moroni, Emiliano Salci – as well as the gallerists and curators whose spaces and initiatives have marked the evolution of this urban phenomenon – including Gisella Borioli, Rossana Orlandi, Antonia Jannone and Carla Sozzani.

XXX-Y 30 OF THE FUORISALONE will be presented in preview on Tuesday 21 December 2021 at the Triennale in Milan with the participation of: Stefano Boeri, Giulio Cappellini, Antonio Citterio, Stefano Giovannoni, Ferruccio Laviani, Piero Lissoni, Rosita Missoni, Paola Navone, Maria Porro and Patricia Urquiola.

XXX-Y 30 ANNI DI FUORISALONE will be in bookstores from 18 January.

INTERNI is grateful for the collaboration of: Videomobile, Moretti and Acqua Chiarella.