CASVA – Centro di Alti Studi sulle Arti Visive

Founded in 1999 with the first archival nucleus dedicated to Luciano Baldessari, CASVA today holds 44 archives belonging to architects, designers, graphic designers, photographers, art directors and journalists, witnesses of a century of creativity and innovation. Through the publishing series The CASVA Notebooks and more than 25 realised exhibitions, the centre has already been able to tell and disseminate the richness of this heritage, now made more accessible thanks to the new venue.

CASVA is at the same time archive, museum, library and exhibition centreA place with multiple functions that aims to offer scholars, students, associations and citizens a space for meeting and knowledge. Here the living memory of the city is interwoven with the ideas and visions that have shaped Milan, from the urban interventions of Vittorio Gregotti to the radical experiments of Enzo Mari, from the inventions of Roberto Sambonet to the experimental architecture of Francesco Ginoulhiac and Teresa Arslan.

The spaces are on two levels: the first floor houses exhibition areas, laboratories, a café and a bookshop, while the basement houses the archives storage, conservation laboratories and consultation and reading rooms. Outside, terraces and courtyards overlooking Monte Stella extend the vocation as a place of sociality and culture open to the city.

The opening of CASVA thus marks the beginning of a new season: a permanent laboratory that preserves the memory of the project and relaunches it towards the future, for the benefit of new generations.