The Compasso d’Oro Collection. A Collection of an Evolving Species

The Compasso d’Oro Collection brings together more than 400 objects and projects: some evoke familiar scenes from everyday life, others belong to the realm of desire, while others remain largely unknown despite having helped shape the way we live.

The new curatorial arrangement of the Historical Collection, the first since the opening of ADI Design Museum, begins with the individual object to tell a broader, collective history of design. From 1954 to 2026, award-winning products, texts and archival materials — photographs, drawings, sketches, advertisements, magazines, prototypes and documents — reveal not only the projects themselves, but also the processes, people and contexts that made them possible.

The display also includes the international editions of the Compasso d’Oro and, for the first time, recipients of the Compasso d’Oro Career Award for Products: objects that have become archetypes of material culture.

Together, objects, documents, texts and graphic elements form a sequence of snapshots of the collective imagination across more than seventy years of history, portraying a discipline and a Collection in constant evolution.

Curated by Maite García Sanchis
Exhibition design: Matteo Vercelloni
Graphic design: Francesco Franchi and Davide Mottes