Now in its 70th year, Compasso d’Oro continues to champion the work of designers and architects who honor their cultural design heritage in a global context. Since the awards program debuted in 1954—an idea credited to the late Gio Ponti—it has recognized excellence in design both in Italy and abroad.
The 2024 Compasso d’Oro awards distributed 11 lifetime achievement awards, 20 product awards, and 3 long-selling product awards for designs that have been on the market for over ten years. In addition, the Targa Giovani—reserved for students at Italian design universities—comprised three awards and nine certificates.
Members of the jury for the 28th edition of the awards included Maria Cristina Didero, design scholar and curatorial director of Design Miami; Luciano Galimberti, designer and ADI president; Francisco Gómez Paz, designer; Renata Cristina Mazzantini, director of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome; Toshiyuki Kita, designer and ambassador of the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka.
Generally, the Compasso d’Oro lifetime achievement awards celebrate design leaders with impactful careers. Piero Lissoni, Italian architect and director of Lissoni & Partners, is among the 11 winners of the lifetime achievement awards. The jury selected Lissoni for his 30-year career which has united different design disciplines, including architecture, as well as landscape, interior, product, and graphic design.
Japanese architect Tadao Ando was dolled a lifetime achievement award for bringing Japanese design culture to the greater design community. The jury also awarded Paola Antonelli—senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York—for maintaining her Italian design ethic on the international stage.
The product awards focus on excellence in style, functionality, and innovation with a consideration of sustainability and formal consistency. The diverse pool of winners stretch from Davide Groppi’s “expressive” Anima lighting fixture to Ferrari’s sleek, four-door Purosangue. There’s even a space suit designed by Rea to “counteract the effects of microgravity” on an astronaut’s body.
On June 20, the ADI Design Museum in Milan, Italy hosted a ceremony honoring this year’s winners. Awarded projects will be on display at the ADI Design Museum in Milan until September 1. Perla Gianna Falvo and Carlo Malerba led the design for the exhibition.