MM 1, 60 years and counting
The Red Line of the Milan underground was inaugurated in 1964. Discovering the cameo exhibition celebrating its anniversary
3' min read
3' min read
Some birthdays don't seem to arrive by accident. Take for example the MM1, Milan's metro line One. It was inaugurated on the first day of November 1964, at 10.40 a.m. (excavation and construction work had begun in 1957). The identifying colour chosen for the 21 stations, totalling 12.5 km from Sesto Marelli to Lotto, was red, and the architects Franco Albini, Franca Helg and Antonio Piva, with the equally justifiably famous graphic design by Bob Noorda, aligned their (very successful and aesthetically pleasing!) layout choices with that colour.
The Compasso d'Oro
The prestigious Compasso d'Oro award came along, and it was no surprise, as the redhead's clean, simple and sinuously perfect lines still enchant with their lightness, functionality and craftsmanship.
The iconic handrail
.One only has to mention the iconic handrail to see that! In short, sixty years and not feeling the weight of it: because the idea and fittings are still decidedly current. What's more, as current as ever, because just a few weeks ago Milan celebrated the debut of the troubled Line 4. The Blu, to be precise, which was completed after 13 years of work. And the comparison, unbelievably for a city whose first line has made history in architecture and design, is aesthetically pitiless: the grey of the line's large tiles (looking at them, one is confused between the reminiscences of the surveyor's dusty office in Brianza and the ante-bathroom just unloaded by the heirs of his widowed aunt, not to mention the various blocked escalators or lifts that are like a lottery jackpot...). An inexplicable and almost mysterious aesthetic catastrophe, mercilessly compared to the elegant essentialities of the red Milanese station or the celestial joyfulness of the Toledo stop in Naples.
The exhibition
But let's go back to the Rossa to which the exhibition 'From project to city: 1964-2024 60 years of M1' is dedicated at the Centrale dell'Acqua, MM's museum (Piazza Diocleziano 5, Milan). Well, among videos, models, original machinery, plans, graphs and documents, visitors are allowed to take an immersive ride backwards through the secrets of this revolutionary work for the time (the innovative construction method adopted, which was called the 'Milan method', made it possible to excavate and at the same time create the least possible impact on surface traffic circulation).
But that's not all: the Milanese owners of houses in the vicinity of the line paid and partly financed the project out of their own pockets (with figures unthinkable today and strictly proportionate to the distance and increase in value of the buildings that benefited from the proximity of the M1 line). Among the curiosities on display is a very detailed model of the San Babila-Cairoli stretch, created in collaboration with the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan.
