Aside from the, inevitable, consolidation the main theme at Milan Furniture Fair 2019, and the one which occupied us much more than that which was on show for our perusal, is/was the international furniture industry's increasing hunger for data; a hunger which embodied itself at Milan 2019 in a exponential surge in the number of manufacturers requiring potential stand visitors to either pre-register, submit a business card or have their Fair ticket scanned before being allowed onto the stand.
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By way of celebrating designer Achille Castiglioni's centenary Italian lighting manufacturer Flos used Milan Design Week 2018 to launch re-editions of two Castiglioni designs: Ventosa and Nasa. Objects which in their own, small, ways allow for an insight into Achille Castiglioni's approach to, and understanding of, design. Flos present Achille Castiglioni - If you are not curious forget it, Milan Design Week 2018 Born in Milan on February 16th 1918 Achille Castiglioni studied architecture
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We're great believers in Fate, in the guiding principle that if it is meant to be, it will be: not least because it protects us from the expectations of achievement. Further proof of the veracity of Fate was provided by our meeting during Milan Design Week 2018 with the project Moorwerk by Jan Christian Schulz. Moorwerk by Jan Christian Schulz, as seen at ein&zwanzig, Milan Design Week 2018 If you compare our claim to have visited 27 design schools on our 2017 #campustour with the number
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Whereas exhibitions in which designers show prototypes and discontinued projects by way of explaining who they are, where they come from and how they work, are a, relatively, regular occurrence, exhibitions in which manufacturers do such are much, much rarer: with the exhibition Typecasting Vitra make a very rare and very welcome exception And in doing so don't just present an image not only of Vitra past, but also take a look into the future..... Vitra -Typecasting, as seen at Milan Design
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Curated by Carwan Gallery Beirut co-founder Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte, Unsighted presents projects by eight international designers; the title making reference to the fact that the designers weren't told for what they were being commissioned, had no external context; were working, as it were, Unsighted. During Milan Design Week 2018 all became clearer... Unsighted, Milan Design Week 2018 As we've oft noted in these pages, in terms of furniture and lighting design, context is important,
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As older readers will be well aware, little gets us down quite like Milan Furniture Fair. Every year our only wish as we cross the Alps is that we will find something to make us thankful that we did. Milan Furniture Fair 2017 produced more such moments than the average year, which we suppose means we'll be back next year!! Our Milan Furniture Fair 2017 High Five!! Linea Perch Stool by Wesley Walters & Salla Luhtasela for Nikari Back at Neocon 2016 we bemoaned the lack of objects in public
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Unbelievably, Eindhoven based design studio Daphna Laurens have never, ever, participated at Salone Satellite, that section of the Milan furniture fair devoted to young design talents. Unbelievably because they are unquestionably talented, and are equally unquestionably young. Even if the works displayed in Milan suggested a maturity beyond their years. Studio Daphna Laurens present Prototipi @ Salone Satellite Milan 2016 Presented under the title Prototipi Daphna Isaacs and Laurens
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As we believe is now traditional at this time of year..... ..... every year at Milan Design Week the Belgian Design authorities proclaim that Belgium is Design. And every year we respond, that it isn't. But is a country with an awful lot of very talented designers......... The "Belgium is Design" claim is however the principle reason we decided to investigate contemporary Belgian creativity in a little more detail, to investigate as it were how much truth stood behind it, and to be able to
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Every time we are in Milan, be it for the Design Week or simply to enjoy the city without the inconvenience of the Design Week, we invariably find ourselves strolling past the Rossignoli bicycle shop on the Corso Garibaldi. An emporium with a history stretching back to 1900, and which positively oozes such, the Rossignoli store has long fascinated us, long fired our imaginations, and yet remains an address we have somehow never managed to enter: this year the perfect excuse was delivered by
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It's been a good long while since we last posted about the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe's kkaarrlls collection, and thus ambling down Milan's Via Palermo towards the kkaarrlls 2016 Edition showcase we inevitably found ourselves querying why that should be....... Not least because ever since we stumbled by chance across the first kkaarrlls showcase at Milan 2009 it has been a project we have liked, enjoyed and followed. If latterly only from afar. Given how much we admire kkaarrlls, we
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Established in 2002 Danish label HAY have quickly risen to become an important player in the European furniture and home accessories market, and in many ways have also served as the archetype for the innumerable new labels that have sprung up across the continent in the last five to six years. Yet to judge by the scale, breadth and obvious cost of their presentation at Milan 2016 HAY are clearly not planning resting on their laurels any time soon: here is brand, we were informed, moving up a
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To the casual observer selecting five outstanding products from the Milan Furniture Fair is a neigh on impossible task, so great is the number of potential candidates. "How", asks our casual observer, "are you going to select just five?!?!" For the seasoned attendee selecting five outstanding products from the Milan Furniture Fair is a neigh on impossible task, because the vast majority of articles on show are anything but outstanding. And those which are are invariably older, established
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To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fritz Haller and Paul Schärer's USM Haller modular furniture system USM instigated a series of masterclasses in which students at seven international design schools were paired with a mentor and asked to "Rethink the Modular" and for all to "consider the significance of modularity in architecture and design" and so "exploit the idea of modularity for contemporary design". The results of the academic exercise were unveiled in an exhibition premièred during
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Several visitors to the Milan furniture fair with whom we spoke, including some whose judgement on such matters we value more than our own, were very excited by the new Uffici chair by Nitzan Cohen for Mattiazzi. We were, and remain, less convinced. Yes with its rigid, unyielding, duck bill-esque form and integrated mesh backrest we can see and understand that it is something new, something different. Yes, its mix of wood and synthetic weave is a nice interplay on two epochs of office chair
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As is becoming traditional the interregional initiative Belgium is Design used Milan Design Week to present a showcase of contemporary Belgian design talent. However, in a break with the tenderfoot tradition the 2015 exhibition didn’t take place in the reserved grandeur of the Triennale di Milano design museum but in the decadent marble festooned grandeur of the Sala Napoleonica of the Accademia di Brera; a venue whose almost stereotypical sumptuousness presented the perfect contrast to the
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It was invariably more through good fortune than good planning; however, at Milan Furniture Fair 2015 Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's principle manufacturers were all sited next to one another. Good for Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec as it meant they didn't have so far to walk to get to their numerous appointments. And good for everyone else as it allowed for a very easy overview of the brothers' latest works. Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's highest profile new launch at Milan Furniture Fair 2015 was
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Privately and professionally we have long complained about, and been deeply saddened by, the lack of side/coffee tables with a shelf to be found in the contemporary furniture market. We know it's a first world problem, we know we should concentrate on other, genuinely important, things, but..... Back in the day all side/coffee tables had a shelf. And today......? Today the smow blog living room is scattered with magazines, brochures, music scores and catalogues we simply do not know where or
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Back in the hazy mists of 2014 the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts, Leipzig presented Sitting – Lying – Swinging. Furniture from Thonet, an exhibition which provided a leisurely stroll through 150 years of Thonet chair design and helped explain the evolution of the company's designs over the decades, including why Thonet lost their way in the 1980s and how from the late 1990s onwards they regained their position as one of Europe's leading contemporary furniture producers. And an exhibition
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In the late 19th/early 20th century Vienna based J & J Kohn helped establish the Austro-Hungarian Empire as an important centre for contemporary furniture design, advanced the careers of leading Wiener Secession era designers such as Josef Hoffmann, Otto Prutscher or Adolf Loos, as well as helping lay the foundations for the commercial furniture industry as we know it today. And while we're not going to forecast such a grand future for Brussels based Ateliers J&J, or at least not yet, from
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Upon seeing Rui Alves's Bridge armchair prototype at IMM Cologne 2015 we commented on the unfamiliar, and for us not instantly accessible, overproportioned upholstered seat and backrest...... Before realising in context of both the Pocket Chair by Jesper Junge and the Lenz Lounge Chair by Bartmann Berlin, Silvia Terhedebrügge & Hanne Willmann, that possibly Rui was just riding the Zeitgeist a lot better than us and that the overproportioned aesthetic had a contemporary relevance we were unaware
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For reasons far too abstract, intangible, and potentially libellous, to go into, we didn't report on the inaugural presentation of USM's new Privacy Panels staged during Orgatec Cologne 2014. Fortunately, and no doubt buoyed by the success of the Cologne presentation, USM are also presenting the Privacy Panels in Milan. When Fritz Haller developed his modular office furniture system for USM it's ability to divide internal spaces in a responsive and functional yet reduced and unobtrusive
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Given that all we have too many household accessories and our planet too few natural resources to justify continually producing ever more household accessories, the vast majority of which will invariably merely gather dust before being thrown out next time you move house, how should designers react? Stop designing household accessories? Certainly one option. Move away from resource heavy mass production to more sustainable forms of smaller scale production, so more craft than design? Without
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For us one of the few genuine joys of Milan Design Week is observing visitors to the furniture fair perching on the simple metal benches to be found on the peripheries of the exhibition halls, benches which resemble safety barriers more than public seating Our joy stemming not from the irony that they find themselves surrounded by chairs in whose collective development millions of Euros have been invested, but because it is the most poetic reminder that a chair is a purely functional object.
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It being early April Milan furniture fair once again stands before us and with it the promise of untold column inches about the latest trends, the hottest young talents, the sharpest suits and the best bars for sharing an Aperol spritz and unsavoury gossip. Or a chance to critically assess the contemporary furniture industry. Yes, we’ve been here a few times in the past, but are always happy to return. There be nothing we enjoy more than biting the hand that feeds us. Among those perennial
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