Highlights of Milano Design Week.
Like every April, in Milan, it’s time for Salone del Mobile, which for the past few years has evolved into Milano Design Week. The event takes shape at the Fiera Milano exhibition centre and then spreads through the entire city, which is transformed into a big stage for a busy calendar of about 350 events, all in the name of design.
The event returns to its “traditional” location after a one-year stop and after two editions held at other times due to the pandemic. Among the countless locations and installations, here is our selection of the most interesting ones.
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Walk the Talk – Moving Energy
Walk the Talk – Moving Energy, by Carlo Ratti and Italo Rota’s together with ENI, is a path at Brera Botanical Garden made of sound and light, created in collaboration with game designers Blob Factory Gaming Studio. The path is composed of hundreds of illustrated boxes (about 400) that store energy to then return it in an evening performance.
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Beyond the Surface
Architects Ellen Van Loon and Giulio Margheri of the Dutch firm OMA have created Beyond the Surface, an underground installation set up at Casa Maveri. The project includes a dreamscape that will draw parallels between the birth and mining of natural stone and the realization of dreams. Just as creating and working with stone takes time, skill and commitment, the same is true about achieving one’s dreams.
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Shaped by Water
Google is collaborating with water, light and sound artist Lachlan Turczan to create Shaped by Water. It is an immersive experience exploring water as a source of design inspiration, installed at Garage 21 on Archimedes Street.
- Vieni a vedere
With Gaetano Pesce’s “Vieni a Vedere,” the Italian designer returns to work with the Bottega Veneta brand to create an immersive installation for the Milan store. The work blends resin and fabric which makes the backdrop for the bags the designer has reinterpreted, My dear mountains and My dear prairies, with 15 and 3 pieces, respectively.
- The Sea Deck
The Sea Deck by Michele de Lucchi and AMDL Circle, is a floating promenade on Milan’s Darsena designed for Azimut Yachts.
This installation offers visitors a new vantage point to enjoy the water from a unique perspective near the historic Leonardo da Vinci Canal. The project wishes to re-propose the same revolution that Azimut introduced in the boating world by inviting visitors to embark on a journey and discover the technologies developed by the shipyard to reduce our environmental impact. As well as this, visitors are invited to share a moment of ‘return to nature’, which is the essence of sailing.
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Alcova
Alcova is situated in the former Slaughterhouse in Milan, Viale Molise 62. Joseph Grima (Space Caviar) and Valentina Ciuffi (Studio Vedèt) bring 70 projects by established and emerging designers to this space of industrial archeology.
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Desacralized
Galerie Philia presents Desacralized, inside the deconsecrated Church of San Vittore e Quaranta Martiri. It is a choral project that results in a holistic interpretation of objects-icons of inviolability and venerability.
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WonderGlass
WonderGlass at the Istituto Dei Ciechi is an exploration of glass by the likes of Paul Cocksedge, Tom Dixon, Elisa Ossino, Bethan Laura Wood and others.
Also not to be missed in this Salone del Mobile and, more specifically, in the Fuorisalone, are tours of the following design galleries: Rossana Orlandi at 14 Matteo Bandello Street; Dimorecentrale, the new home of Dimoregallery at 63 GB Sammartini Street; Oxilia Gallery at 9 Nino Oxilia Street; and Nilufar Depot, 34 Vincenzo Lancetti Street.
