Paola Lanzani e La Rinascente: la professione di una vita

It was in the mid-sixties when Paola Lanzani – as she recalled by donating her archive to the Milan Triennale Foundation (2008) – “sensed the great difficulty in those times for a woman to exercise the profession of Architect and, on a trip to America with her daughter Piercarla, observed the world of department stores, visited them carefully and they fascinated her” (Ciagà & Feraboli, 2008). The talk aims to frame the activity of Paola Lanzani (Nerviano, 1933 – Milan, 2021) by emphasizing both her resourcefulness, able to build her career with courage and autonomy, and the different threads that weave the fabric of her personal activity as a designer by merging rationality, experimentation, interest in art and leading her to spe-cialize ante litteram as an interior designer for large-scale retail. After graduating from the Milan Polytechnic in 1959, she followed her husband to Bogota where they opened a studio, working on the different scales of architecture; Paola, however, immediately manifested a marked inclination for the study of retail spaces and furnishings. She thus took her first steps in the world of retail and furniture design as a consultant for the Ervico furniture industry between 1960 and 1964. She teaches Technical Drawing at the University of America in Bogotá, an experience that shines through in the precise and coherent design of the layouts and exhibition supports that, once back in Italy, she will create for Rinascente, starting in 1996 at the “Sales Promotion Service.” If the distributional organization of the layouts reveals a profound rationality, the reflection on the module, on repeatability, on color, on potential variations allows different patterns and suggests the perception of movement marking a meeting point with the art of Dadamaino and Enrico Castellani. This influence is found, for example, in the installation with programmed lights made under the portico of la Rinascente with Livio Castiglioni (1970). He also experimented with the potential of plastics, from inflatable BP gasoline gadgets to Plexiglas furnishings with Ugo La Pietra to geometric lamps with Turi Simeti. The activity of a lifetime, however, paraphrasing Mario Praz’s “the house of a lifetime,” remains the outfitting for large-scale retail and, in particular, for Rinascente, where, since 1979, she has become the head of the “Design and Consultancy Service,” taking care of all the locations of the department store and its affiliates.