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Architects and interior designers have long served as sources of inspiration for fashion designers. Some, like the Memphis Milano group, have become enduring references, influencing everything from garments to haute joaillerie.
However, there are equally compelling yet less obvious figures whose work offers rich creative inspiration - one such figure is Franco Raggi. Architect, exhibition designer, editor, designer, artist, and maker, Raggi's multidisciplinary career makes him a fascinating reference point for fashion designers and students alike.
Born in Milan in 1945, Raggi graduated in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano in 1969. His early career saw him collaborating with Studio Nizzoli Associati while also engaging in writing and illustration. After discovering Radical Architecture, Raggi became increasingly engaged with avant-garde art. He contributed to leading design magazines, particularly Casabella and MODO.
At the same time, he played a key role in curating exhibitions, organizing events for the Venice Biennale (1975-76) and the Triennale Milano (1973, 1985). By the late 1970s, his interests had expanded into product and furniture design, leading to collaborations with iconic brands such as FontanaArte, Kartell, Poltronova, and Artemide, just to mention a few.
Currently, Raggi is being celebrated in a dedicated exhibition, "Franco Raggi. Pensieri Instabili" (Franco Raggi. Unstable Thoughts; on view until April 13th) at Triennale Milano. The exhibition explores his contributions to both the Italian and international design scenes, showcasing his work in product design, exhibition installations, interiors, projects, drawings, publishing, and film.
Housed in the Design Platform space of the Museo del Design Italiano, an area devoted to key themes and figures in contemporary design, the exhibition is conceived as an experimental exploration of his work.
Visitors embark on a journey that begins inside a caravan, leading them into a large blue tent that encapsulates Raggi's multifaceted career as both architect and designer. The choice of these structures is far from arbitrary: the caravan references Raggi's 1974 drawing "Tempio Roulotte," showing a classical temple affixed to a mobile home, blending the notions of permanence and impermanence.
The tent in the exhibition serves as both a social structure and an experimental arena, a recurring theme in Raggi's work. Inside the tent displays present photographs, buildings, interior design projects and objects such as lamps, chairs, and furnishing accessories.
Another section is devoted to his magazine work, featuring a selection of covers from Casabella and MODO, along with drawings, notebooks, and extracts from his extensive writings, plus technical drawings also for Gianfranco Ferrè's atelier and showroom. The exhibition concludes with a section featuring images of installations, happenings, and exhibits, including several events held at Triennale.
The blue tent installation is inspired by two significant projects in Raggi's career: "Tenda Rossa" (1974) and the "Roma Interrotta" exhibition (1978) at Trajan’s Market in Rome.
"Tenda Rossa" (Red Tent) was conceived as a survival tool, a conceptual blend in which architectural history combined with the uncertainty of a young graduate still searching for direction. Raggi depicted a Doric temple on a nomadic red tent, symbolizing both tradition and transience. The color red was a poignant reference to the Italia airship disaster of the late 1920s, when an Arctic expedition crashed onto the ice. The stranded survivors repurposed available canvas to pitch a tent, painting it red to increase visibility.
The first physical installation of "Tenda Rossa" took place in a meadow south of Milan and became a collective ritual involving figures like Alessandro Mendini, Carlo Guenzi, and Enrico Bona. Over time, it was re-erected in various locations, including Monselice (1975, for "Architetture Impossibili"), as well as Bologna and Siena, before ultimately being destroyed in a fire.
Through projects like these, Raggi's work continues to challenge the boundaries between architecture, design, and artistic expression. His career serves as a testament to the fluidity of disciplines, offering inspirations to designers across industries, fashion included.
For fashion designers and students, Franco Raggi's work offers several key takeaways, starting with his eclecticism. The way he moves fluidly across disciplines, transitioning from the artist's sketchbook to the architect's drawing board (the title of the exhibition refers to this fluidity – Raggi's work is "unstable" because it is difficult to pigeonhole).
In an interview for this exhibition, Raggi explained that his approach stemmed from a deep sense of uncertainty about where he truly belonged. Instead of limiting him, this uncertainty became a strength, allowing him to explore different creative fields without constraints. This concept is particularly relevant to our times in which we often find ourselves branching out in different contexts. In contemporary fashion we also have designers who are increasingly blending disciplines, borrowing from art, architecture, and performance to shape their collections, and finding new materials and forms in very different fields including medicine and science.
Another defining aspect of Raggi's work is his constant fascination with contemporary art and design. He viewed these fields as spaces of freedom and innovation, where contrasting elements could coexist. This openness to contradiction and hybridity is a powerful lesson for designers, fashion thrives indeed on juxtapositions, whether it's mixing luxury with streetwear, old techniques with new technology, or structure with fluidity.
Beyond this, Raggi also anticipated key material innovations: in 1983, he wrote the article "Le Olimpiadi dei materiali" (The Olympics of Materials) for Alcantara's exhibition "Materialidea," predicting the rise of materials that would become increasingly mimetic, chameleon-like, and high-performance in their apparent mutability. We can compare what he wrote then with what is happening nowadays with the fashion industry exploring adaptive textiles, smart fabrics, and sustainable biomaterials that transform with wear and environment.
Fabric played a recurring role in Raggi's projects: outside his "Roma Interrotta" exhibition at the Trajan’s Market, a confrontation between 18th century Rome and a contemporary Rome reimagined by 12 international architects, he installed a light blue fabric adorned with the exhibition's title in gold lettering, a design inspired by the drapery of Catholic rituals.
Some of his textiles, like the panels with prints of columns, representing sparse fragments of architecture in space, are included in this event. These pieces evoke an elegant and timeless quality and you can bet that at some point they will reappear as prints in a fashion collection.
Further inspirations may come from Raggi's lamps, for example from the shape of his first lamps, the Oz (1979), a skewed cone with a rhombus inserted into it, and the Cap, a white opaline ogival element paired with a colourful adjustable disk.
There are also Oskar, a lamp vaguely inspired by a character from Oskar Schlemmer's "Triadisches Ballett," that, when disassembled, looks like the pattern for a dress (or that could inspire a dress that could become a lamp... View this photo) and the anodized aluminum candelabrum "Scongiuri" (literally "superstitions," "incantations" or "counter-charms," as the candelabrum's name is inspired by the superstitious sign of the horns) that is also a DIY sculpture that you can assemble and reconfigure (are there any fashion designs nowadays that can be easily assembled and reconfigured by the wearer?).
Perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of Raggi's work for fashion designers is his exploration of the body and constraints that resulted in a spontaneous collective project titled "Scarpe Vincolanti" (Shoes for Forced Confrontation, View this photo), a conceptual investigation into the archetypes of making and the relationship between body, object, and ritual. In June 1975, architects, designers, and artists gathered in the courtyard of an old Milanese house to create improbable, uncomfortable, and inevitably ephemeral objects along the theme "the body and constraints."
In stark contrast to the dominant trend of technological, ergonomic, and functional design, Raggi and the others embraced an archaic and dysfunctional approach. The resulting objects were provocative and disruptive, challenging assumptions about design's purpose and questioning whether objects must always be useful. Some of the most extravagant designs included: tube-glasses that forced prolonged eye contact and binding bracelets that physically restricted movement; masks that obscured vision while exposing only the mouth, nose, or ears; intentionally impractical clogs designed for uphill walking; elastic garments for conjoined wearers, forcing intimacy and shared movement, and shoes for forced confrontation, made from experimental clay, which fused two different shoes together, preventing movement and compelling wearers into a regulated physical and visual relationship.
These experiments anticipated many ideas that continue to inspire contemporary fashion - think about the themes of restriction, transformation, and body-object interaction in modern fashion.
Last but not least, there is also the "Valigia degli Stili" (Style Suitcase) that may prove intriguing for fashion designers and students. This idea was born from a collaboration with Alessandro Guerriero of Studio Alchimia. Guerriero envisioned an exhibition of containers and invited various designers to create their own suitcase.
In response, Raggi introduced "Valigia degli Stili," a concept that transformed an architect into a door-to-door salesperson offering interchangeable styles. He imagined a suitcase featuring numerous small compartments filled with fabric pieces that showcased different designs, each one capable of being pulled out to reveal a new aesthetic. However, this approach proved too complicated to execute. So he narrowed the focus to just two contrasting styles: once you opened the case, crafted entirely from mahogany and adorned with brass details, you would find two tags labeled "Greek" and "Modern," each accompanied by its corresponding piece of fabric: one with a hand-painted Greek column and the other entirely white. This concept invites further exploration: can we reimagine the "style suitcase" for a fashion designer? Or a knitwear designer? What would we include in such a container?
So, if you visit this exhibition at Triennale, don't stop at the single objects, but think in which ways Raggi's legacy can offer a powerful message for contemporary (fashion) designers, from embracing uncertainty to seeking inspiration across disciplines and challenging conventions in unexpected, conceptual or playful ways.
Image credits for this post
1. Tempio Roulotte, ink and pencil drawing on cardboard, 1974. Courtesy of Franco Raggi Archive.
2. La Tenda Rossa dell'Architettura, hand-painted and hand-sewn fabrics, 1975. Courtesy of FRAC Centre-Val de Loire Collection, Orléans.
3 to 7. Installation Views, Franco Raggi's "Unstable Thoughts" @ Triennale Milano, Milan, Italy. Photography: Delfino Sisto Legnani - DSL Studio © Triennale Milano.
8. La Classica, 1976. Photography: Gianluca Di Ioia - Triennale Milano.
9. OZ, table version, FontanaArte, 1980. Courtesy of Franco Raggi Archive.
10. OZ, floor version, study sketches, 1980. Photography: Gianluca Di Ioia - Triennale Milano.
11. Cap, sketches and studies, 1981. Photography: Gianluca Di Ioia - Triennale Milano.
12. Scongiuri, self-produced by FR, 1998. Photography: Gianluca Di Ioia - Triennale Milano.
13. Valigia degli Stili, 1977, pastel on paper. Franco Raggi Archive.
14. Axonometric drawing of the Granciclismo showroom (with Daniela Puppa), 1988. Courtesy of Franco Raggi Archive.
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