It’s really, really hard not to gush about Milan Design Week, which includes the Salone del Mobile furniture fair and Fuorisalone (literally “outside the fair,”) event staged in districts around Milan. By most accounts this is the largest design event of any kind in the world, drawing an estimated one million designers and design mega-fans.
I’m of the latter, and I’ve been a regular for nearly two decades. It’s absolutely an addiction, a high, a buzz like no other. Inspiring, informative, intense and probably several other words that start with “I” that I can’t think of right now. We only have space to tease a few discoveries from the furniture fair and elsewhere in the city. (See the end of this feature if you find yourself needing a bigger fix.) For now, here are the discoveries we made at Milan Design Week this year:
Despise Design
“Despise Design, All Bless the Fair!” is a troupe of design interns based in the Netherlands with a mission: to rethink the process of design and the role of the designer.
“Ultimately, it has a couple of forms,” explained one of the despisers who, rather that introduce himself, lists the names of everyone in their collective of 13. “For us our names are really not important. None of us is the head honcho. I’d rather you left names out of the article, to be quite honest.”
The group’s goal was to start (and host) a series of conversations about the intersection of design, exhibitions and waste, with provocative performance art.
“We’re slowly wrapping up furniture we found in the basement of this building when we arrived this morning. Later we’ll unwrap them again. Most of the things you see at these fairs have already been wrapped and unwrapped … and will probably be wrapped up again when it’s over.”
“Yes, it’s about waste, but it’s also about how much design fairs really affect design practice …
they form it, in fact. People spend six months preparing to come here, they spend a lot of money and it frames their ideas and how they’re shared. And we think that’s worth having a conversation about.”
After we met the group hosted three discussions in their space inspired by the seven deadly sins, targeting the monetized culture of design fairs and challenging the represented practices within.
“There’s a hopeful frustration to it, and a desire to find alternative ways.”
Despise Design (they’re thinking of renaming it “Despite Design”), is a collective brainchild of the great minds at the Design Academy Eindhoven.
Biodiversity Shoe
Unwanted Furniture
Like a Bar
Italian decorative panel producer Cleaf (pronounced klee-off) stunned the materials world a decade or so ago with their introduction of sophisticated, deeply textured TFL (thermally fused laminate) panels for furniture and millwork. This year they were one of the few raw materials producers with enough chutzpah to set up camp amongst the sleek furniture displays at Salone del Mobile. Their “Like a Bar” concept held its own.
Created by Bestetti Associati, it’s a ride on a carousel-bar to discover four moments of the day through four material effects: the morning bar with fabric-effect surfaces, the lunch bar with stone designs, the aperitivo bar with wood designs and, of course (hey, we’re in Milan!), a disco bar with metallic effects.
Every few minutes the bar would rotate a quarter turn, and the lighting and music would change to spotlight a different time-of-day mood. Cleaf panels are distributed in North America by Richelieu and EB Bradley.
Fantoni’s Workplace 3.0
IKEA Icon
Brought to You By
This coverage is made possible by MaterialIntelligence.com, dedicated to bringing materials-based education and CEUs to designers, architects and students, and ClimatePositiveNOW.org, a science-based movement celebrating materials that go beyond sustainable.
