Compasso d'Oro

The ADI Compasso d'Oro is a global design award established in 1954, the oldest and most authoritative recognition in the sector.

Born from an idea by Gio Ponti, it was initially organized by the La Rinascente department store, with the aim of highlighting the value and quality of the newly born Italian design products. It was later passed to the ADI (Association for Industrial Design) which has organized it since 1958, guaranteeing its impartiality and integrity.

The ADI (Association for Industrial Design) created in 1956, brings together designers, companies, researchers, teachers, critics, journalists around the themes of design: project, consumption, recycling, training. Always a protagonist of the development of industrial design as a cultural and economic phenomenon.

There are hundreds of projects awarded with the Compasso d'Oro in over sixty years of existence and thousands of those selected with the Honorable Mention, collected and kept in the Historical Collection of the ADI Compasso d'Oro Award whose management has been entrusted to the Foundation ADI, established for this purpose in 2001.

The Compasso d'Oro award is awarded after a pre-selection carried out by the ADI Permanent Design Observatory, made up of a commission of experts, designers, critics, historians, specialized journalists, members of the ADI or external to it, engaged with continuity in collecting information every year and in evaluating and selecting the best products, subsequently published in the ADI Design Index yearbooks.

With an initiative that has no precedent in the field of international design, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage - Regional Superintendency for Lombardy, with Decree of 22 April 2004, declared the Historical Collection of the ADI Compasso d'Oro Award "of exceptional artistic and historical interest", including it in the national heritage.

All the winners of the Compasso d'Oro:
​www.adi-design.org/tutte-le-edizioni-del-compasso-d-oro