Design

Goodbye Milan Design Week

9 years ago

Arrivederci Milano Design Week | Collater.al

The curtain of the Milan Design Week 2017 falls, and a point now seems to be clear: the canonical six days of the design week – if it wasn’t clear before – are no longer enough; including new neighborhoods, events, conferences, and so on, the time is not enough.

Several are the novelties of this edition, from the Ikes Festival (closer to the design that matters) to the participation of Airbnb, through the new areas of Ventura Centrale.

Let’s start from here to tell you what we did not want to give up.

VENTURA CENTRALE is probably the real revelation; a unique space (the one of ex Magazzini Raccordati) that is returned to the city hosting the most evocative installation. Among the best the works of Luca Nichetto and Ben Gorham for Salviati. Here shapes and colors, layered and stacked in a different way, have become glass elements from the countless possibilities and gave birth to 53 Pyrae totem and 3 Strata blocks. Lee Broom celebrated ten years of activity and realized Time Machine, a white carousel with enchanted light that welcomed some pieces of the collection and hidden to a first glance the true time machine, a pendulum clock in Carrara marble (least interesting of the carousel) produced in limited series. Maarten Baas, with May I have your attention please?, delivered to Lensvelt the second consecutive Milano Design Award (Best Concept). In his theatrical installation tens of megaphones dispersed sounds surrounding some copies of the 101 Chair; a chair model in series, always the same but always different, where the seat-backs make the difference.

INVISIBLE OUTLINES was an immersion in the creative world of Nendo, designers among the most prolific in circulation that never disappoints. At Jil Sander showroom in Via Beltrami sixteen collections materialized (or dematerialized) setting the boundaries of what we perceive; from the border table that dissolve on the walls, to the jellyfish vase swaying underwater, and to the objectextile generated by the projection of 3D objects, where everything leads back to the relationship between inside and outside, visible and invisible.

FOUNDATION brought elegance inside Spazio Krizia. Major players in this design week, the Formafantasma presented their research on the world of light, seen as a subject rather than as an intangible reality, studying the basic principles of shadows, reflections, shades and projections. In addition to a selection of the Delta collection for Galleria Giustini Stagetti and a series of experiments developed by Peep-hole, it was possible to see a preview of the collaboration with the Textiel Museum in Tilburg.

S.F _ SENSES OF THE FUTURE won the Milan Design Award 2017 and, of course, was one of the installations which has been the subject of so much debate. At center stage the LG technology and its OLED screens interpreted by Tokujin Yoshioka and assembled to return from a SF side to the S.F chair, a set of chairs animated by light, and on the other Wall of the Sun, a large wall consisting of 30,000 overlapping lights on four levels with the same number of intensity. The result was a half-light space invested at times by a large glow as a symbolic presence in our future.

NEW SPRING made everyone smile. After Sou Fujimoto, this year COS has relied on Studio Swine, and the outcome was an interactive installation aesthetically perfect and in line with the H&M brand. A sculpture, a tree that flowers and leaves fall dense spheres, smoke laden, ready to dissolve in the hands of enchanted visitors; the incessant flow of the condensed nature in a moment of contemplation and collective sharing. One of those moments in which the Salone, fortunately, makes us act like kids with the desire to discover.