Toyo Ito interprets Andrea Branzi's vision of design, architecture, and planetary coexistence through a poetic exhibition at the Triennale Milano.

In a time dominated by technopower and the obsession of the future, I found it revitalising and awakening to enter a space of profound introspection, a state of continuous present, elicited by the powerful combination of Toyo Ito’s refined gaze on one of the most sophisticated thinkers and creative minds of the Italian Design.

Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito. Continuous Present is a major exhibition at Triennale Milano dedicated to the work and thought of Andrea Branzi, presented through the eye of his friend and collaborator, the Japanese architect Toyo Ito. Held on the first floor, Cubo, the exhibition runs from 19 March to 4 October 2026 and brings together drawings, objects, books, catalogues, letters, and archival materials to retrace more than fifty years of Branzi's research across design, architecture, cities, and theory.

Conceived by Toyo Ito in collaboration with Lorenza Branzi and Nicoletta Morozzi, the exhibition is curated by Nina Bassoli of Triennale Milano and Michela Alessandrini of Fondation Cartier. Rather than offering a conventional retrospective, Continuous Present frames Branzi's work as an open and evolving system, one in which objects, environments, images, and ideas remain in constant dialogue with the present.

Toyo Ito has imagined this exhibition as a flow of thoughts and matter without rigid physical and semantic boundaries to accompany the visitor into a poetic journey of infinite reflections.

Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito. Continuous Present, Triennale di Milano, overview of the room dedicated to “Oggetto Ibrido/Hybrid Object”

The visit starts with the experimentations Branzi did in Florence with Archizoom on the theme of “Superarchitettura”, a provocative concept of a “super architecture” generated by consumerism and capitalism, which shifted the principles of architecture towards exaggeration and homologation.

Emerging from those years of speculative exploration into the profound transformations cities were undergoing, Branzi conceived the project No-Stop City, whose philosophy has been summarized by Toyo Ito into 3 points: “Urban space is homogeneous and expands infinitely; urban space has neither beginning nor end and transforms ceaselessly; urban space does not need architecture.” (Toyo Ito, 2026)^[1]

^{[1] Toyo Ito, “Un Presente Continuo: La Filosofia di Nadrea Branzi” in Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito. Continuous Present, exhibition catalogue, Triennale di Milano, Milan, 2026, p. 15. Translation from Italian by the author}

Toyo Ito dedicates a whole room to No-Stop City and the following visions of the urban spaces, conceiving a fluid space where drawings, materials, prototypes, and speculative artifacts intertwine and reflect on each other in a play of mirrors.

Branzi rendered an idea of the city that, through networks of information, expands infinitely in homogenous patterns dominated by consumerism: a grid of streets lined with buildings of production and consumption. Architecture has by now become superfluous, even useless.