The Lake Como Design Festival: design measures up to history

Alvar Aalto’s sofa bed is on show at the Sala Turca at Como’s Ridotto del Teatro Sociale: the AA1, designed by Finnish master in 1932, currently in the catalogue of MisuraEmme, based in Mariano Comense (Como), is a piece that not just comes from afar, it harks back to Aalto’s meeting with Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy and Siegfried Giedion in 1929, at the second Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne, in Frankfurt, on the Existenzminimum. In 1932, Giedion invited Aalto to contribute to the design of a collection for Wohnbedarf, putting into production the convertible sofa that was exhibited in 1932 in Stuttgart, and later at the 1935 Universal Expo in Brussels.

Today, it is part of the exhibition entitled History Repeating. Come designer e aziende guardano alla storia [How Designers and Firms Look at History], curated by Marco Sammicheli, Director of the Triennale di Milano Design Museum, which is on at the Lake Como Design Festival between 6 and 10 October (tickets €15). The AA1 is one of history’s “unusual landings”, as Sammicheli likes to call them, in this case outside Aalto’s native Finland, where we are accustomed to him working, right in the vicinity of Como, where the exhibition and the entire event now in its third edition is taking place, as it transitions from a fair to a festival under the guidance of Artistic Director Lorenzo Butti.

Illustrating the exhibition, Sammicheli explains, “The fact that certain non-Italian creators, such as Alvar Aalto, ended up in the catalogues of companies from round these parts many years ago, shows Como’s propensity for welcoming others, not just tourists or communities passing through, but creators who find favourable conditions to create something special.”