The Tech Issue
ARCHIVIO opens its third editorial cycle: four thematic issues, each curated by a Guest Editor with deep expertise, offering access to worlds where past, present, and future converge.
The third issue, ARCHIVIO N°11, focuses on technology and is curated by Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino, together with Cecilia Botta, technology historian and Head of Memories at Promemoria Group, the magazine’s publisher. Daniela Hamaui oversees editorial direction, while Alessandro Gori shapes the art direction.
The cover, designed by artist Ailadi, pays tribute to the early aesthetics of the digital age. Created using PETSCII, the character set of Commodore 8-bit computers, it evokes the visual language of technology in its formative years.
ARCHIVIO N°11 maps the international landscape of technology archives, tracing the roots of the digital revolution and exploring the places where our technological past is preserved, along with the collectors and institutions that recognized its cultural value.
The issue is structured in three sections — Stories, Institutions, Collectors & Collectives — and includes a special poster: an (in)complete mapping of Italy’s technology archives, researched by Promemoria Group and visually interpreted by Accurat.
Massimo Banzi,“Often the most important innovations are the ones people talk about the least. The 6502 powered machines that defined a generation: these computers processed dreams, turning teenagers into programmers and hobbyists into entrepreneurs.”
Guest Editor
Glimpse of the Month
Where Design Meets Technology
Paola Antonelli’s Vision at MoMA
A conversation between Paola Antonelli and Massimo Banzi
As Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA in New York, Paola Antonelli has reshaped the boundaries of what design can be—and what a design museum can collect, preserve, and exhibit. Since joining MoMA in the mid-1990s, Antonelli
has been a driving force behind the integration of digital technology into the museum’s curatorial vision. For her, code is as legitimate a design material as wood or steel, and an interface can be as culturally significant as a chair or a building. Antonelli’s exhibitions—such as Design and the Elastic Mind (2008), Talk to Me (2011), and Broken Nature (2019)—have explored how design intersects with science, communication, sustainability, and emerging technologies. Under her curatorship,
MoMA has acquired everything from the @ symbol to video games, opensource platforms, and AI-generated artworks. These moves have challenged conventional notions of permanence, authorship, and materiality in museum collections.
