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The Compasso d’Oro award celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2024 with the announcement of a special international edition to coincide with Expo 2025 Osaka. Since its creation in 1954, this award, established by Gio Ponti, has grown to be the most prestigious Italian recognition in the design field.
The 28th Compasso d’Oro awards were presented to the winners on June 20 at the ADI Design Museum, located in the Milanese square named after the award.
Awards this year went to 20 products, along with three long-selling products, and nine Italian and two international designers. The 11 recipients of the career awards were Paola Antonelli, senior curator of the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMa, New York; Umberto Cassina, president of Mdf Italia; Anna Ferrino of Ferrino & C; Roberto Gavazzi of Boffi/DePadova; Piero Lissoni, architect and designer; Francesca Planeta, president of Planeta Estate; Maurizio Riva, president of Riva 1920; Paolo Rizzatto, architect, designer, and entrepreneur; Roberto Ziliani, founder of Slamp; Tadao Ando, Japanese architect; and Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme De Garçon.
Among the products to receive awards are, in the luminaire category, the Figaroqua Figarolà lamp, designed by Paolo Rizzatto and Mario Nanni for Viabizzuno, and, in the museum category, Museo D’Arte Fondazione Luigi Rovati, designed by Mario Cucinella Architects.
Thirty-nine honorable mentions also went to products that stood out for their quality.
The nominations were assessed by an international jury of leading design experts, including Luciano Galimberti, designer and president of ADI; Renata Cristina Mazzantini, director of Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea; Toshiyuki Kita, designer and ambassador of the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka; Francisco Gómez Paz, designer; and Maria Cristina Didero, freelance author and curator.
The Targa Giovani youth award went to three projects by students from Italian universities: Luca Costa and Stefania Russo from the University of Palermo; Andrea Ceschin from ISIA Roma Design, Pordenone; and Irene Ferrari from the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts.
With the creation of a special in memoriam award, ADI and the ADI Foundation also recognized three important figures from the world of design who recently left us, including Gaetano Pesce and Italo Rota, who both passed away in April this year, and Manlio Armellini, who passed away in 2020 and who, with FederlegnoArredo, founded Salone del Mobile.
The winning designs, including those that received an honorable mention, will become part of the Compasso d’Oro permanent collection, now on show at the ADI Design Museum. The exhibition, which includes 174 of the products from this edition, will be open to the public through September 16, 2024.
>>> Farewell to Italo Rota, one of the greats of Italian architecture.
As the jury mentioned, each one of the 311 nominated designs reflected a desire to innovate in terms of the two key concepts of sustainability and workplace safety. The first edition of the Compasso d’Oro Internazionale will have the task of presenting on a world stage the principles of quality design and social responsibility that have established the importance of the award over its 70 year history.
Reflecting the focus of Expo 2025, to be held in Osaka from April 13 through October 13, 2025, the theme of the 2025 Compasso d’Oro Internazionale is Designing Future Society for Our Lives – a call to action that aims to involve the international community in designing a more sustainable society that’s more in step with the needs, wishes, and lives of individuals. “What is the happy way of life?” is the question the Expo will try to answer.
Once again, design has shown itself to be a cross-sectoral discipline that’s able to bring together knowledge and skills – sometimes very distant from each other – without neglecting that all-important emotional impact.
>>> Expo 2025 Osaka: the Italian Pavilion imagined by Mario Cucinella as an Ideal City
All images courtesy ADI Design Museum
