Taglietti : Life in Design

Friday 24.07.26 16:00-17:00 Talk:

Hear Taglietti’s youngest daughter, Tanja (the custodian and curator of the Taglietti Studio Archive) discuss growing up in the innovative, global, and fascinating household of Franca and Enrico Taglietti, where art, architecture, culture and design amalgamated in Canberra during its post-war expansion. In conversation with Virginia Rigney, co-curator of the Canberra exhbition, Tanja will discuss the role of the Taglietti family’s journey to Australia, Enrico’s international posts, and the unsung role that Franca played in developing and fostering the family’s creativity and place in Canberra’s vogue design set.

Tanja Taglietti is a Canberra-based artist, designer, and the youngest daughter of the eminent Italian-Australian architect Enrico Taglietti. As the custodian and curator of the Taglietti Studio Archive, she plays a vital role in preserving and promoting her family's profound architectural and design legacy. She has been heavily involved in celebrating the centenary of her father's birth, co-curating the major retrospective exhibition Taglietti: Life in Design showcased at the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG).

Beyond preserving her father's architectural archives, Tanja has carved out her own creative path. She is a working artist and designer, and previously served as the co-director of the Bilk gallery, a prominent Canberra-based contemporary art and design space.

Virginia Rigney is a Curator, Writer and Creative Producer who has worked with artists, designers and collections to develop exhibitions, publications, digital platforms, installations, short films, and public programs within museums for over 35 years. Her curatorial practice also embraces the expanded field of temporal and permanent public art.

Virginia joined CMAG in 2018 in the role of Senior Curator Visual Arts. Her most recent curatorial projects there include Taglietti: Life in Design (2025-6), Materiality…But not as we Know it (2024), eX de Medici - Sidney Nolan - Guns and Flowers (2023-4), Mandy Martin: From Queanbeyan to New York 1978-1984 (2021-2) and the co-curation of Canberra/Kamberri Place & People, which was awarded the 2023 AMAGA Award for Best Permanent Collection Exhibition.

Saturday 25.07.26 11:00-12:00 Talk:

Silvia Micheli, co-curator of the Canberra exhibition Taglietti: Life in Design will discuss the origin story of Taglietti’s arrival to Australia through the platform of the David Jones Italy in Design (1955) exhibition series. These exhibitions were held across three David Jones stores and showcased traditional and contemporary Italian craft selected by David Jones buyer Marisa Martelli. In these exhibitions, Taglietti, invited by Charles Lloyd Jones (Chairman of David Jones) to participate, designed a 1:1 scale apartment, curated and designed bespoke furniture and fixtures that showcased a contemporary Italian design approach previously unseen in Australia, and incorporated globally recognised furnishings that highlighted collaborations with artists such as Lucio Fontana.

Dr Silvia Micheli (BArch, Politecnico di Milano; PhD, IUAV Venice) is Associate Professor and Programme Convener of the Bachelor of Architectural Design at University of Queensland. 

Silvia’s cross-disciplinary research addresses the "productive city": how small-scale design improves liveability, resilience and urban food security. Her co‑authored book House, Precinct and Territory: Design Strategies for the Productive City (2024) outlines scenarios for urban production. She co‑designed Blue Bower Pavilion (Crossroads Prize, Seoul Biennale 2021) and One Room Tower, and was co‑curator of Taglietti: Life in Design at CMAG in 2026

Silvia has published monographs and edited volumes on Italian and international architecture, and collaborates with institutions including the Seoul Biennale, Triennale di Milano, MAXXI and Vitra. She is a registered architect (Italy) and serves on the editorial board of Springer's Transnational Histories of Design Cultures and Production book series.

Saturday 25.07.26 15:30-16:30  Tour:

Rigney will outline the curatorial approaches behind the exhibition and its origins in Canberra at CMAG, the history of the Taglietti Studio Archive, key items of interest in the exhibition, and the fascinating cultural background and lineage that placed the Tagliettis in Canberra during a time of optimism, aspirations for global and urban advancement, and the contrasting reception the Tagliettis received with respect to other emigre designers and practitioners of the time.

Virginia Rigney is a Curator, Writer and Creative Producer who has worked with artists, designers and collections to develop exhibitions, publications, digital platforms, installations, short films, and public programs within museums for over 35 years. Her curatorial practice also embraces the expanded field of temporal and permanent public art.

Virginia joined CMAG in 2018 in the role of Senior Curator Visual Arts. Her most recent curatorial projects there include Taglietti: Life in Design (2025-6), Materiality…But not as we Know it (2024), eX de Medici - Sidney Nolan - Guns and Flowers (2023-4), Mandy Martin: From Queanbeyan to New York 1978-1984 (2021-2) and the co-curation of Canberra/Kamberri Place & People, which was awarded the 2023 AMAGA Award for Best Permanent Collection Exhibition.

Tuesday 04.08.26 13:00-14:00 Talk:

Hear Nanette Carter discuss emigre design culture, Taglietti’s work with artists and designers in his practice, and how that related to the everyday - particularly the burgeoning interest in Italian design which was most obviously evident in Melbourne’s 1950s cafe culture. Taking influence from papers given on Carter’s research into artists like Clement Meadmore and his work on The Tea House and The Legend, hear how these collaborations, such as in projects like the Town House Motel in Canberra brought design and artistry into the everyday.

Nanette Carter completed a master’s degree in art history focusing on the development of modern design in Melbourne in the 1930s. She subsequently researched and wrote on postwar interiors by designer and artist Clement Meadmore. Her 2015 PhD on the emergence of DIY culture in the postwar period in Australia was jointly supervised by the School of Historical Studies and the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. In addition to researching and writing about Australia’s design history, Nanette has curated exhibitions for Swinburne University of Technology—‘Pen to Pixel’—and for Heide Museum of Modern Art—‘Savage Luxury: Modernist Design in Melbourne 1930–1939’. Her latest publication Frances Burke: Designer of Modern Textiles with Robyn Oswald-Jacobs launched in 2021. Nanette is an adjunct scholar connected to the School of Design, Swinburne University.

Thursday 13.08.26 13:00-14:00 Talk:

Hear Annmarie Brennan, Senior Lecturer in Design Theory (Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, UoM) discuss industrial design culture, particularly in relation to Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. In her PhD, Brennan discussed Olivetti, the pioneering Italian manufacturer founded in Ivrea in 1908, that was renowned for famous examples of innovative industrial design like the MoMa permanent collection featured Lettera 22 typewriter (1950) or the Programma 101 (1965) - recognised as one of the world's first personal computers. Brennan will contextualise this design and product culture with the groundbreaking architectural showrooms of the Olivetti brand, such as in Venice and New York, that placed Italian design and culture at the forefront of the everyday. This approach informed generations of Italian designers like Vico Magistretti, Gio Ponti, Ettore Sottsass and Anna Castelli Ferrieri - and was a design ideology keenly followed and explored by Enrico Taglietti in his designs for buildings, furniture and a future Canberra.

Dr AnnMarie Brennan is Senior Lecturer in Design Theory at the University of Melbourne, teaching architectural history, theory and supervising PhD candidates. Her research addresses 20th–21st century design and architecture, with interests in the culture of technology, digital heritage, industrial design, media (cinema, video games), AI, machine culture and the history of computing in design.

AnnMarie is part of the ARC‑funded project 'Locating Giurgola: From Philadelphia School to Global Practice’ (2022–2026), an investigation into the career of Romaldo Giurgola, who established successful practices in New York and Philadelphia, and later Canberra and Sydney. Giurgola’s most famed work in Australia was in partnership with Mitchell and Thorp of the Australian Parliament House in Canberra. The research has produced an oral history of the firm Mitchell/Giurgola and a co‑edited book anthology on the firm’s transcontinental practice and civic architecture. Her publications include the Yale School of Architecture journal Perspecta 32: Resurfacing Modernism and Cold War Hothouses: Inventing Postwar Culture from Cockpit to Playboy(co‑edited), and articles in AA Files, Journal of Design History, Design and Culture, Journal of Architecture and JSAH.

Dr Brennan serves on editorial boards including Design Studies, co‑founded the student journal Inflection, has curated numerous conferences and exhibitions, and holds degrees from Catholic University of America, Yale School of Architecture and Princeton University (PhD 2011).

Friday 14.08.26 16:00-17:30 Talk:

Hear Professor Anthony White speak about 1950s Italian Art, such as the work of Lucio Fontana (a collaborator of Taglietti’s and whose work features in the exhibition) and the pivotal role these interdisciplinary collaborations had on the development, representation, and exploration of an Italian design culture, both domestically and internationally, that continues to resonate to this day. With Virginia Rigney, curator of the Canberra edition of Taglietti: Life in Design, White will discuss the positioning of Italian art within the 1940s and 50s Milanese design community, and the interactions between Taglietti and a series of interdisciplinary creatives prior to his departure for Australia, thus contextualising inspirations that lie behind Taglietti’s diasporic oeuvre.

Anthony White is Associate Professor and Head of the Art History and Art Curatorship Programme at the University of Melbourne, specialising in modern and contemporary art. He is the author of Italian Modern Art in the Age of Fascism (2020) and Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch (2011), and co‑author of Variations (2023) and Art as Enterprise (2016).

After a PhD from Harvard (2000) Anthony was Curator of International Painting and Sculpture at the National Gallery of Australia (2000–2002) and has held visiting posts at NYU, CASVA and ANU. He has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and SSHRC, and was President of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (2014–2018).

Virginia Rigney is a Curator, Writer and Creative Producer who has worked with artists, designers and collections to develop exhibitions, publications, digital platforms, installations, short films, and public programs within museums for over 35 years. Her curatorial practice also embraces the expanded field of temporal and permanent public art.

Virginia joined CMAG in 2018 in the role of Senior Curator Visual Arts. Her most recent curatorial projects there include Taglietti: Life in Design (2025-6), Materiality…But not as we Know it (2024), eX de Medici - Sidney Nolan - Guns and Flowers (2023-4), Mandy Martin: From Queanbeyan to New York 1978-1984 (2021-2) and the co-curation of Canberra/Kamberri Place & People, which was awarded the 2023 AMAGA Award for Best Permanent Collection Exhibition.

Wednesday 19.08.26 11:00-12:00 Talk:

Hear Alberto Pugnale discuss his research on Binishells, an innovative and automated construction technique to generate and build thin concrete shells and dome structures that was invented by Italian industrial designer and architect Dante Bini near Bologna in 1964. Pugnale will discuss his research into this construction methodology, which culminated in his 2023 book Architecture Beyond the Cupola: Inventions and Designs of Dante Bini. Alberto will outline the impact and potential future application of such construction automation techniques from the past and how they might inform and generate new architectural forms and languages for the future.

Alberto Pugnale is Associate Professor in Architectural Design at the University of Melbourne and Co‑Director of the Advanced Digital Design + Fabrication (ADD+F) Research Hub in the Melbourne School of Design. He specialises in computational design, optimisation workflows and AI‑based methodologies, and in digitally analysing historical precedents. His research and practice span concept development, prototyping and automated fabrication to reduce resource use and tackle environmental challenges. He has contributed to construction history by examining innovation in construction and fabrication, and explores pedagogies for integrating technical knowledge in architectural education.

Alberto’s awards include the IASS HANGAI Prize (2007), ISI Foundation Lagrange scholarship (2008), IABSE Photo Contest prize (2008), the IASS Tsuboi Award (2023) and first prizes in IASS Design Competitions (2023, 2024). He was Assistant Professor at Aalborg University (2010–2012), has lectured internationally, serves on the editorial boards of Nexus Network Journal and International Journal of Space Structures, and is a member of IASS and SAHANZ.

Friday 28.08.26 16:00-17:30 Talk:

Hear from a collection of young Italian architects, designers and creatives, including Simona Falvo of Trower Falvo Architects, Andy Dal Pozzo and Laura Frazzetto from Pepper and Well on their work, background, and the influence of Italian design thinking, culture and lineage on their own approach to architecture and design and looking to the next generation of influential designers with links to Italy.

Simona Falvo is an architect and director of Trower Falvo Architects, and a design educator at the University of Melbourne. She believes in design which recognises history yet is committed to the contemporary; design which celebrates function, space and proportion; and design which is responsive to place and context.

Pepper & Well is a Melbourne-based architecture and interiors studio founded by husband-and-wife duo Andy Dal Pozzo and Laura Frazzetto. The firm is known for bespoke residential renovations and extensions that prioritize heritage preservation, material honesty, and client-first design.