Enaip Factory, with Enaip School and Enaip Lodge, forms a “Campus” specializing in wood furniture and design.
The building in which it is located began as a factory, later housed the museum of the Riva 1920 company and, finally, was home to CLAC (Centro Legno Arredo Cantù).
A large arch designed by Cantù architect P. Pininfarina is placed at the entrance.
Enaip Factory is a place to give space to “savoir faire” and design, which frees emotions, intercepts them and channels them into innovative study and design.
It is a multi-purpose center with: cultural area (Library specialized in wood-furniture and design, Bruno Munari Collection, Rationalism Collection and Neoliberty Collection), co-working area and FabLab (Fabrication Laboratory), equipped with advanced technologies, where people, students companies design, develop and realize innovative ideas.
Collection: “Thirty-five pieces of furniture of Italian Rationalism” owned by Federlegno Arredo Eventi Spa
The collection, housed in Enaip Factory brings together furniture and furnishings designed and made between 1929 and 1940 in the Milan, Como and Turin areas.
These are original examples of pieces put back into production or reconstructions made on the basis of original drawings and archival documentation.
Such objects were designed by Figini, Pollini, Terragni, Asnago, Vender, Albini, Pagano and others.
The exhibition highlights the conception of furniture that derives from architectural composition: in fact, “[…] today’s furniture must re-enter architecture, must return to be subjected to its meter and laws. It is necessary to get used to seeing interiors in a new way […]” (Figini and Pollini, Architecture of the Modern Environment. Notes and Morality, 1932).
Collection: “Neoliberty And Surroundings”owned by Federlegno Arredo Eventi Spa
Their experiments were among the most varied: it is difficult to find a common denominator other than the desire for research that invested the design of the individual piece of furniture and the design of the environment, within which they sought to establish (as the best Art Nouveau had taught) precise spatial relationships.
Preserved in this collection are objects that testify to the relationship between architects and designers with the Canturese furniture industry: among the designers we must mention Franco Albini, Ico and Luisa Parisi, and Gio Ponti.
Bruno Munari” Collectionowned by the Municipality of Cantù, Associations of Friends of Cantù Museums and private collectors
The collection brings together more than 1,000 works including design objects, graphics, publishing and works of art, and is the result of a series of initiatives that various subjects in the area have developed since the exhibition that Munari himself organized in 1995 with the Association of Friends of Cantù Museums.
Munari’s multifaceted activity, open to different artistic forms, overrides genres, aesthetic types and usual schemes so as to make its classification complex.
In relation to the variety of research conducted by the artist and the particularity of the collection, it was chosen to classify the work into four categories: Publishing, Design, Art Multiples and Unique Works.
