Concept
May 1 – June 15, 2025
Curated by Alessandro Colombo and Paola Garbuglio
ADI Design Museum presents Dante Bini. Out of the Box, an exhibition dedicated to one of the most eccentric and radical figures of design culture in the second half of the twentieth century. An architect, inventor, and builder, Bini navigated the boundaries between architecture, engineering, and industrial design with independence and precision, developing solutions that addressed social, technological, and ecological urgencies.
Curated by Alessandro Colombo and Paola Garbuglio, the exhibition offers a thematic reading of Bini’s work, avoiding a chronological narrative in favor of a conceptual, centered structure that reflects the variety and simultaneity of his fields of research. The exhibition design mirrors Bini’s interdisciplinary approach, where each project engages in dialogue with the others through visual and narrative axes that cross the space—transforming air, the quintessential raw material in Bini’s work, into a vector of connections and meaning.
In a time when design is being called upon to redefine its role in relation to sustainability, technology, and social responsibility, ADI Design Museum reflects on a figure who made unconventional vision his stylistic hallmark, blending poetic intuition, technical rigor, and imaginative drive. A forerunner of practices that are now central to contemporary discourse. The role of the architect is explored as strategically positioned yet marginal to mainstream architectural narratives—a collective process of study and rediscovery conducted by the scientific committee in dialogue with the Archivio del Moderno in Mendrisio, which will host the Bini archive for future research.
At the core of Bini’s work is the development of alternative construction techniques, where experimentation becomes methodology. From the first Binishells—domes raised by air pressure—to space habitat prototypes, Bini’s work stands as an exploration of the potential of material, form, and space. Projects like Kyoto K21 and Tower City address the challenges of urban density, while devices such as the Biniscooter offer decentralized and sustainable models for energy and mobility.
Each project responds to a context, a crisis, or a vision. Form is never an end in itself but emerges from construction constraints, structural logic, and considerations of use—an approach that reveals a creator operating beyond disciplinary boundaries, anticipating many of today’s most urgent issues. The exhibition aims to bring back into the spotlight a figure long overlooked in official narratives. “Studying Bini’s work is like a treasure hunt,” writes the scientific committee, composed of Alberto Bologna, Carlo Dusi, Will Mac Lean, Alberto Pugnale, and Giulia Ricci.
From the dome at Columbia University’s campus in 1967 to lunar habitats, Dante Bini acted like a modern Galileo: challenging the laws of the physical world in order to rewrite them through design. Out of the Box celebrates the transformative power of a mind both visionary and practical, poetic and technical. As astronaut Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17 once told him, “Of you and me, only the immortality of the energy of our thought will remain.”
“Dante Bini is the embodiment of the Renaissance builder: he fuses humanism and innovation into a design poetics that speaks of the future, of lightness and substance. His architectures, born ‘with air,’ express a vision that transcends conventional forms—hard to categorize but unmistakable. Like air itself,” commented ADI president Luciano Galimberti.
The exhibition is also a tribute to Bini’s lateral thinking, his ability to see problems as opportunities, and his enduring spirit of public and professional service. A true innovator ahead of his time, a maker who turned every constraint into a chance for wonder.
