Gilda Bojardi, editor of INTERNI, the Mondadori Group’s interiors and contemporary design magazine, was today awarded the Compasso d’Oro prize for her career Carriera as part of the XXVI Compasso d’Oro ADI. This prestigious design award was first given in 1954 and based on an idea by Gio Ponti with the aim of enhancing and supporting Italy’s rich creativity.

Gilda Bojardi was recognised by the jury as an undisputed protagonist in the culture of Italian design, “a solid point of reference for information about the ever-expanding world of design, able to anticipate complex phenomena with an approach to the contemporary that is never banal or ideological along with a critical position that is as constructive as it is original. She has also been able to interpret transformations in the publishing sector and made a fundamental contribution to the creation of ways of popularising and expanding the audience, also through events, which thanks to her vision have become international in scale.”

Under her leadership, the Mondadori Group magazine has become an authentic point of reference in design and thanks to her creative energy has developed a system of parallel publications that have transformed the title from a monthly magazine into a brand able to create events, starting the FuoriSalone in Milan, and other initiatives, also abroad.

“I have to express my great thanks for all of the encounters, both chance and sought after, that life has given me,” said Gilda Bojardi,  “and to all those people that I have had the possibility to get to know much better in my working life and who have enriched and stimulated me in the discovery, as a lawyer manqué, of the wonderful world of design and architecture, and satisfying more than generously my curiosity.”

In fact, she is a qualified lawyer, with a degree in law from the University of Milan. Her professional relationship with INTERNI began in 1980, and in 1990 she was made editor of the ‘Annual’ monographs published as supplements to the magazine and became editor of the monthly in 1994. She conceived the FuoriSalone, began as an experiment in 1990, the Design Week that now animates the city of Milan every year in the month of April with a wide range of events. For her commitment to the spread – both nationally and internationally – of the culture of design she has already received a number of prestigious awards, including: Officier des Arts et des Lettres (French Ministry of Culture – 2006); Ambrogino d’oro (City of Milan – 2007); 1° Prix Designer’s Day (Paris – 2008); Premio ITA Italian Talent Award (Italian Chamber of Deputies, Rome – 2014). She has also been the Ambassador of Italian Design for the “Italian Design Day” in March 2017 in Mexico City, and in March 2018 and 2019 in Madrid. In October 2019 she received the Medalla Anáhuac en Diseño 2019 during the international conference “Diseñar para la Humanidad” in Mexico City.

The award was given this morning in preview at the headquarters of the ADI which hosts the new ADI Design Museum-Compasso d’Oro. The museum, which will open in December, is in the former industrial area of via Ceresio 7, and will feature a permanent exhibition “Mettere Radici” with prize-winning design objects from1954 to the present.