aldo rossi's furnishings meet 1970s sculptures in milan unifor show

la città degli oggetti takes over spazio unifor for museocity 2026

Until March 15th, 2026, Spazio UniFor at Viale Pasubio 15 in Milan hosts La città degli oggetti: Aldo Rossi e Francesco Somaini (The City of Objects: Aldo Rossi and Francesco Somaini) as part of the In Vetrina program promoted by MuseoCity. Curated by Studio Klass with Fondazione Francesco Somaini Scultore, the installation brings into dialogue iconic furnishings designed by Aldo Rossi for UniFor and a selection of 1970s sculptures by Francesco Somaini. The exhibition takes place in the central hall of Spazio UniFor, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and reflects the city as object, memory, and constructed idea.

all images by Alessandro Saletta – DSL Studio

four rooms, one urban grid

Studio Klass structures the exhibition as a sequence of four rooms aligned with the structural grid of the building, extending the logic of the architecture into the curatorial layout. The spaces function as compact, museological architectures, pairing one sculptural work with one architectural object and introducing a distinct chromatic register, a recurring theme in Rossi’s work.

Visitors move through calibrated spaces where light, scale, and material contrasts shape the encounter. Cartesio, Consiglio, Parigi, and Museo are presented as architectural objects. Designed by Rossi for UniFor, they condense personal and archetypal memories while evoking imaginary cityscapes. Bookcases assume the presence of facades, cabinets read as civic volumes with modular rhythms. Rossi’s notion of the analogue city, a conceptual city assembled through memory, typology, and repetition, becomes tangible in these pieces.

Spazio UniFor at Viale Pasubio 15 in Milan hosts La città degli oggetti: Aldo Rossi e Francesco Somaini

sculpture against the metropolis

In counterpoint, Somaini’s archi-sculptures introduce a material and formal tension. Conceived in the 1970s through his engagement with the built environment, these works treat the city as a field of forces rather than a fixed image. For the sculptor, New York becomes a paradigmatic site in which to test the relationship between art and architecture at urban scale. Placed alongside Rossi’s objects-architectures, the sculptures expand the dialogue between memory, matter and the city.

From this encounter emerges a landscape in which the real city overlaps with the imagined one. The installation constructs what can be understood as an analogue city, shaped by collective memory and set in contrast with a critical reinterpretation of the modern metropolis.

Within the framework of MuseoCity’s In Vetrina initiative, Spazio UniFor becomes a vessel for La città degli oggetti: Aldo Rossi e Francesco Somaini, an exhibition that proposes a precise, close-range reading of two parallel investigations into how the city can be reimagined through art and design.

part of the In Vetrina program promoted by MuseoCity