The new chapter in the life of ADI Design Museum, announced in February 2026 during the Olimpiade Culturale, is now moving towards realization and will be dedicated to Gio Ponti, a foundational figure in design culture and in the creation of the Compasso d’Oro, the award at the origin of ADI, with an over 70-year-long history. The signing of the agreement between Regione Lombardia and Fondazione ADI Collezione Compasso d’Oro officially launches the development of a permanent space, which will expand the museum surface by approximately 700 square meters.
The structure designed by Maurizio Milan introduces an autonomous architecture conceived to engage with the museum’s post-industrial identity: a lightweight mezzanine in steel and wood will be inserted into the central wing, preserving its nature as a traversable device and accommodating both a permanent section and temporary activities. “We do not want to create a celebratory space,” stated ADI Design Museum president Luciano Galimberti, “but an active environment inspired by Gio Ponti’s reformist principles, open and accessible. For this reason, it will be a free-access space, designed for everyone”.
The heart of the project lies in the curatorship of the scholarly framework - entrusted to historian Fulvio Irace, one of Ponti's leading scholars - which is built around the complexity of Ponti's thought as a fundamental voice in his time as well as in the present. A natural choice, stressed ADI Foundation President Umberto Cabini, when talking about a figure who was able to interpret design as a "synthesis of industry, culture, society and communication."
The space, which will be set up by Matteo Vercelloni, adds another piece to the dialogue between the Historical Collection of the Compasso d'Oro and contemporary design themes on which since its opening in 2021 the Museum has based its programmatic nature as a place of research and cultural production.
The work will start in the summer of 2026 and will be completed by December, while a public seminar is planned for September to help define the contents of the project in a collective dimension, involving institutions, businesses, scholars and the Ponti Archive.