MADE IN POLIMI. DISCOVERING HISTORY AND BUILDING THE PRESENT

In recent years, universities have increasingly chosen to express their identity by conceiving and setting up university museums. The Politecnico di Milano is a technical-scientific institution for the development of engineering, architecture and design: established in 1863, it represents the significant case study of a university with a rich history and multifaceted contemporary practices to represent. This poster wishes to present MADE IN POLIMI: a permanent exhibition space, opened in 2020, that tells the story of the Politecnico di Milano. Displaying a collection of documents, images and objects that spans through architecture, design and engineering, it employs physical and digital instruments to describe innovations and projects devised by graduates and professors, women and men of the Politecnico, in over a century. It represents the central space of a widespread system of polytechnical collections, housed in the departments and laboratories of the university. By narrating a multidisciplinary history bringing together technology, science, fashion, design and the arts, MADE IN POLIMI displays the past of the university as the moving force to build its future. The exhibition space becomes an inclusive instrument to engage the broader public in discovering rather than witnessing the materials. It constructs a thematic open archive that wishes to create an interactive dialogue with the visitor prompted to touch materials, listen to interviews, flip through drawings, open drawers, actively involving him in the collection and transforming the exhibition from a place of authority to one of transfer of knowledge and cultural agency.