SALONE ARCHIVE | The history of water vehicles at Fiera Milano

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Text by Giovanni Comoglio

Interior of the third Salone Nautico at the Milan Fair in 1962

Boats, speedboats and yachts, not to mention bicycles, scooters and pairs of skis – everything that can help us walk on water, as illustrated by photos from the Fondazione Fiera Milano.

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It’s easy to see flying as a victory for science, Leonardo, the Wright Brothers etc., but we are already familiar with air, while harnessing it as a support mechanism is a matter of applied physics. Our relationship with water is quite another thing. It’s the element we’re composed of, not the one we inhabit, or breathe – what a triumphant sense of progress, however, when we manage to inhabit it. Walking on water, though, let’s not even go there: from science we’re starting to verge on the supernatural, to shades of messianic.

Graziella amphibious caravan, demonstration, Milanolago, Fiera Campionaria di Milano, 1966

Perhaps tracing this collective emotional picture is going a bit too far, especially when we start adding in the details of the trade fair landscape into which it is designed to slot (the smells, the food, the babble, the visual noise of constant publicity), but the images of Sample Fairs and post-war Saloni show that it isn’t so far-fetched.

There’s the presence of water, first of all: actual water at the trade fair in Milan – and we’re talking about boat shows organised bang in the middle of a city, bang in the middle of the Padano plain, not fountains – which, is already in itself a statement of technological progress that leads directly from the naumachia, or mock naval battles, of Ancient Rome to the age of techno polymers. Then there’s the form the water takes. 

Darsena, Salone della Nautica, Fiera Campionaria di Milano, 1956

There’s the dockyard created bang in the middle of the fairgrounds, which became the focus of entire exhibitions, not to mention Roberto Menghi’s now-iconic swimming pool, a theoretical volume of water suspended  above a plaza in a glass and concrete casket.

Diving Pool by Roberto Menghi, Fiera Campionaria di Milano, 1957

There are the vessels. One after another, dockyard after dockyard, sailing boats and then motor boats; the first resin models alongside the wooden vessels and the all-plastic ones; general admiration stoked by dreams of little individual regatta-going nutshells, and the bold dockyard anchored right in the middle of the fair, and even the all-wood motor boats redolent of wax, petrol and the dolce vita, both actual Riva Aquarama boats or simply models inspired by them.

Boat trip, Darsena, Salone della Nautica, Fiera Campionaria di Milano, 1952

When slightly more ambitious demonstrations were called for, the trade fair moved a little further afield to Milan’s artificial lake, the Idroscalo. From the 1960s, there are  the water-skiing championships and the Boat Show Grand Prix, and the rather comical German Amphicars towed behind Graziella caravans across the lake. But also objects more capable of bringing the dual dimensions of road and water together, such as water bikes (bottomless canoes, complete with pedals and handlebars).

Aquatic bike, Fiera Campionaria di Milano, 1967

However, it’s by going back to the post-war origins of the Sample Fair, and its location, with its dockyard bang in the middle of a city square, that we get a feel of that urge to challenge real life with nothing more than two sticks and a match: it is 1952 and visitors to the fair are greeted by the sight of a young woman piloting a water scooter. 

Darsena, Salone della Nautica, Fiera Campionaria di Milano, 1952

Not a hint of the fluorescent resins or the outboard motors of the 1980s – literally a Vespa mounted on a two-float hull.  A dual instance of design hacking, given that the chassis of the Vespa was derived from the reuse of residual aeroplane wings being stored  at Piaggio, and later reused again and assembled in order to walk (engine-powered) on water.

Products and materials for camping, Fiera Campionaria di Milano, 1958

It isn’t just the post-war thirst for progress that shines through these images – perhaps the messianic references weren’t so far-fetched after all.

Stay tuned！