My first encounter with signature design was about 20 years ago. My sister Sara had just moved to Milan to study product design at the Politecnico di Milano and convinced my parents to buy a jointed lamp for our house in Sicily: one of those products that is in every design history book. We kept the table lamp in my father's office–an engineer–to represent his professional status, along with the leather chair, the new PC and his framed degree. Little more than a child in those days, I was fascinated by the spring-and-lever balancing mechanisms of the lamp, and I liked to play with it: pulling, moving and rotating it like a toy crane. Only I was punctually yelled at because it was considered a valuable commodity, and therefore untouchable (or only usable “by grown-ups”).

A few days ago, I found myself playing with a Fortebraccio, a lamp that—like the one my parents still own—is inspired by the Naska-Loris balanced-arm model: a classic from the 1930s. This time nobody told me off, even though the context was that of a museum. This was because within the exhibition Alberto Meda. Tension and lightness, a series of projects by the Italian designer were transformed into games, and in particular the Fortebraccio into a sort of puppet, by means of a system of pulleys and rods. In addition to the playful aspect, which makes these nine “devices” irresistible to audiences of all ages and types, the game explains the mechanical and structural principles on which Alberto Meda’s designs are based.

Alberto Meda is an engineer and belonged to the Italian School of Engineering, one that enjoyed great success after World War II. He graduated from the Milan Polytechnic in 1969 and is a pupil of masters such as Riccardo Morandi and Silvano Zorzi. While these two are best known for building futuristic urban infrastructure, Meda concentrated on a different scale. Meda worked with objects while maintaining the same “positivist” approach as Morandi and Zorzi. This meant enhancing the physical properties of existing materials through human action, one example of this would be the prestressing of reinforced concrete.

Curator Marco Sammicheli recounts, “He was formed in the very years when postmodern aesthetics predominated with Alchimia and Memphis, materials were the key to approaching design because of their mutant identity, the way they could be transformed to produce sensuous objects. Instead, Meda anchored himself to a form of typological self-discipline on which he would regulate his research and the objects he developed. He has always seen materials and technology as a storehouse of ideas and a repertoire of possibilities.” His projects seek “a state of balance between all the issues involved. Since the techniques he uses already contain very strong messages and maybe even their own potential language, I always attempt to curb the impact of the technological image. This is partly because the role of technology is to solve problems, so there is no need to put it on display.”

In 1973, when he was only 28-years-old, he became Technical Director of the Italian brand Kartell, which saw him study and experiment on polyurethane. He saw this material as one that had to be innovated and experimented on, in the same way as cement was by Italian structural engineers. A few years later, in 1979, he opened his professional studio in Milan where, strangely enough, he always worked alone. In an article for the magazine Interni, journalist Cristina Morozzi wrote: “Alberto (...) always worked alone in his Milanese studio in Via Savona and did not even have a secretary. It is a choice to remain a person and not become a business. His limited energies force him to find a balance, restricting him to seeking only ambitious and interesting projects. Dialogues and relationships he develops with the entrepreneurs, technical departments and workers of the companies he collaborates with.”

Thanks to his discipline, rigour, honesty and precision, Alberto Meda has become an important name in the history of Italian design. This is demonstrated by the countless prizes he has won. To look only at the Compasso D'oro—the most prestigious award in Italy and among the most relevant internationally: in 1989, 1994 and 2008 he won it with the lamps Lola, Metropoli, Mix by Luceplan, in 2011 with the table Teak by Alias, in 2016 with Flap, soundproofing panels by Caimi Brevetti, in 2018 with Origami Screen-Radiator by Tubes.

This brings us to the exhibition at Triennale Milano Italian Design Museum. Tension and lightness is the perfect title for this exhibition. It captures his quest for “making light” and the reduction of all waste and useless gestures. This attitude is also synonymous with durability, as opposed to consumerism. But the title could also speak of revolution, that of a curatorship that rereads Meda's work and subverts the clichés that for too long have confined the Milanese designer to the role of design technician. The role of the curator Marco Sammicheli, Director of the Triennale Milano Italian Design Museum, and the designer Riccardo Blumer, author of the exhibition design project, are therefore central.

The exhibition is part of the proposals of the Design Platform, a new exhibition space of Triennale Milano, connected to the Museum of Italian Design and dedicated to in-depth studies of key themes and figures in contemporary design. It is accessed by passing through the museum itself, and then through more than 300 objects selected from the vast Triennale Milano archive. Alberto Meda. Tension and Lightness is a comprehensive exhibition with projects, photographs, prototypes, drawings, and unpublished materials arranged according to the main strands of his compositional poetics: the search for visual and constructive lightness through mechanical exercises, tension and suspension, the focus on the integration of functions, technology and materials, the use of light, and the evolved concept of comfort.

“I like the rule that corrects the emotion. I like the emotion that corrects the rule.” With this quote from the philosopher Georges Braque, architect Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano, summarises Meda's design practice. “The rule is that of engineering, the field in which Meda trained. The emotion is conveyed by the sense of wonder arising from the extraordinary technical, aesthetic and formal results characteristic of all the designer’s projects. Between these two poles lie curiosity, play, constant experimentation with materials, the pursuit of lightness and the essence.”

Alberto Meda. Tension and Lightness is on view until January 7, 2024.