The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: Nanda Vigo’s Interior Design

(English / Italian)

Nanda Vigo (1934–2020) played a central role in the 1960s avant-garde in Milan. Moving between art, design, and architecture, Vigo realized hundreds of apartment interiors, installations, environments, shops, and furniture designs. This book presents her architectural work through archival documents, unpublished drawings, historical and contemporary photographs, and essays. It offers a comprehensive exploration of her practice across scales and disciplines—from interiors to scenography, from architecture to furniture and cinema. What emerges is a world open to leaps of scale and time, resistant to fixed typologies and boundaries—where design meets ritual, objects dissolve, and space unfolds as an event. Drawing on first-hand accounts by artisans, colleagues, friends, and inhabitants, the publication reveals Vigo’s contribution to interiors as living matter.

• Inspiring designs at the interface of architecture, interior design, art, and popular culture
• Fundamental scientific research on Nanda Vigo in the context of the Milan design scene
• Extensive and partly unpublished archival material

Silvia Groaz, Assistant Professor in the History of Architecture, Paris and Liège