Everything we saw at Salone 2021

A roundup of images of the best installations of this particular September edition of the most anticipated event in Milan.

Milano Design Week, city mood Brera District

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Brera District

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Brera District

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Brera District

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Brera District

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

Milano Design Week, city mood Statale di Milano

Photo Marco Menghi

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Marianna Guernieri
12 September 2021

After a two-year shutdown, the September Salone was a memorable event. We were expecting a somewhat underwhelming edition, on a much reduced scale, but we found ourselves in front of a very lively Milan, which, during the lockdowns, evidently continued to work tirelessly behind the scenes. The Salone 2021 was easy to visit and enjoyable: we wanted to meet each other again and share impressions, and the reduced scale of the event made it possible.

1. Alcova From the center and the north of Milan, the spotlight now moves to the south, to the Inganni area. Inside the huge complex of the Military Hospital of Baggio, between Via Forze Armate and Via Simone Saint Bon, is the new home of Alcova, the curatorial project by Space Caviar and Studio Vedèt, which for some years now is themust-see destination for the Fuorisalone. Within its 3,500sqm of exhibition space, made of gardens, outdoor paths and ruined buildings covered with vegetation, once inhabited by nuns and nurses, this week the work of 50 exhibitors including independent designers, galleries, schools and innovative brands, can be found.

Photo Marco Menghi

1. Alcova Installation by Marc Leschelier

Photo Marco Menghi

1. Alcova Installation by Schemata Architects

Photo Marco Menghi

2. Ikea Temporary Home at Base Put the galactic flights of the last Biennale temporarily aside. Ikea lands at Base with a concrete and very lucid installation on a house of the future that we could perhaps have built yesterday. A small space compared to what the Swedish corporate is used to, but nonetheless extremely significant. It is the consequence, rather than the product, of a research carried out specifically for the edition that was cancelled due to the pandemic. But that scenario is still ours: small, temporary living spaces, the harvesting of rainwater, many chill-out areas and nature entering the home are the main themes. And for the first time in an official Ikea exhibition in Italy there are also hacks, by the prototyping workshop Miocugino. Base is in the Tortona area, MM Porta Genova. (Alessandro Scarano)

Photo Marco Menghi

2. Ikea Temporary Home at Base

Photo Marco Menghi

2. Ikea Temporary Home at Base

Photo Marco Menghi

3. Assab One In via Assab 1, Elena Quarestani presents three exhibitions in the former printing company that has recently become the Milanese headquarters of the Formafantasma studio. The “1+1+1” group show curated by Federica Sala proposes, once again this year, a dialogue between three artists from different backgrounds: Belgian architects Jan Ve Vylder and Inge Vinck who challenge visitors to look at the reality around them with different eyes; Piacenza-based artist Claudia Losi who expresses her historical work of embroidery and botanist artists Caretto/Spagna with an installation that harvests and circulates rainwater. In addition to the “1+1+1” exhibition, Assab One will be hosting the evocative site-specific work “Cartogramma Bianco” by Daniele Papuli and the photographic installation “360° Horizon” by Marco Palmieri, until 16 October.

The nearest metro station to Assab One is Cimiano. Open until Saturday 11th September. opening hours 3 p.m. - 7 p.m.

(Giulia Guzzini)

Photo Giovanni Hänninen

3. Assab One

Photo Giovanni Hänninen

3. Assab One

Photo Giovanni Hänninen

4. 5 Vie They had an extra year to get ready and they expolited it to the full: the organizers and curators of the 5VIE district are offering a rich and varied program with the circular economy as its leitmotif. The exhibition-workshop by Madrid-born Jorge Penadés (curated by Maria Cristina Didero in via Cesare Correnti 14), which reuses textile fibre waste to create a new material, is well worth a visit. At SIAM (via Santa Marta 18), we recommend a performance by Francesco Pace, a Dutch-based Italian designer known as Tellurico, who will be creating live a collection of wooden furniture in the courtyard of the historic building. Also at SIAM, the “Line of marble” group show (10 Portuguese designers working with local stone) and the small exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute in Hong Kong (with videos of students from three universities who worked with the three Italian designers Federica Biasi, Federico Peri and Sara Ricciardi) are also worth a visit. It will take a bit of patience and luck, on the other hand, for those who want to attend the performance of Benevento designer Sara Ricciardi, who, for the entire week will be moving through the streets of the district on a cart designed by her. Offering flowers, poems and baroque sandwiches to visitors, she will reinterpret the figure of the street vendor.
The nearest stops to 5VIE are Missori and Cordusio (Elena Sommariva)

Photo courtesy 5 Vie

4. 5 Vie

Photo courtesy 5 Vie

4. 5 Vie

Photo courtesy 5 Vie

5. Fluid Crust Surgery at Marsell Paradise “Which is your favourite?” Raquel Quevedo reaches down and grabs a multiform, shaggy sculpture, a whitish mound that turns blue along the ridges, perfectly sized to fit in the palm of her hand. She says she appreciates its complexity, the cross-references between organic and inorganic, and how each time she finds something new in it. It is one of the 200 sculptures that the Barcelona-based artist presents at Marsell Paradise as possible fossils of the future, thus nothing new that hasn’t already been seen before, yet entirely in line with the mainstream wave of our era, where people at happy hour talk about the post-anthropocene with the same fluency with which we wore a suit in the 1980s.The exhibition is completed by a screening, graphic design works, and a beautiful hardcover book, which combines narrative and non-fiction texts, and in which one can find a font especially created by Quevedo, which also features on the exhibition poster. A choral gaze that embraces the planet. Marsell Paradise is located at Via Privata Rezia, 2, M3 Lodi. (Alessandro Scarano)

Photo courtesy Marsell Paradise

5. Fluid Crust Surgery at Marsell Paradise

Photo courtesy Marsell Paradise

5. Fluid Crust Surgery at Marsell Paradise

Photo courtesy Marsell Paradise

6. Bulgari At the Gallery of Modern Art (GAM) in Milan in Via Palestro, the unmissable exhibition by Bulgari entitled "Metamorphosis": a journey through the vintage and contemporary jewelry of the maison and amazing installations commissioned to artists, architects and designers renowned internationally: Ann Veronica Janssens, Azuma Makoto, Daan Roosegaarde and Vincent Van Duysen. The fil rouge is the snake, on of the company's icon. The exhibition starts from the outside of the building, with a temporary pavilion where contemporary jewels are displayed, narrated by affable students from the Politecnico of Milan who are graduating in Jewellery Design with a thesis on Bulgari. Inside the building, among the sculptures of the 19th century, we find the gigantic bouquet of fresh flowers by Azuma Makoto, the perceptive alterations between color and transparency in the glass and resin cases by Ann Veronica Janssen (a real puzzle!), the magic of the golden metal wall that resembles the skin of a snake by Daan Roosegaarde, whose scales curl up when warm air passes through, letting the light pass and then repositioning themselves exactly as before: a living and environmentally sensitive architecture that combines poetry and technology. Finally, Vincent Van Duysen's contemplative refuge, perhaps the least sensational of the four.

Photo Marco Menghi

6. Bulgari Installation by Azuma Makoto

Photo Marco Menghi

6. Bulgari Installation by Daan Roosegaarde

Photo Marco Menghi

6. Bulgari Installation by Ann Veronica Janssens

Photo Marco Menghi

6. Bulgari Installation by Vincent Van Duysen

Photo Marco Menghi

We attended a very human event, perhaps because in recent years it had abundantly exceeded its limits. The great immersive installations in the city have certainly missed, but not completely, take for example those of the queens of the fuorisalone, the fashion houses such as Hermès or Bulgari.

Toiletpaper Home Outside the usual Fuorisalone routes and overlooking the recently built Residenze Carlo Erba, the decorated facade of Toilet Paper’s house is a popular selfie destination for tourists and Milanese alike. Now Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari’s Wunderhaus is opening its doors to the public. The occasion is the birth of Toiletpaper home, a “brand dedicated to projects for the home”, the latest step in the now well-established collaboration with Seletti, which over the years has given birth to a powerful collection of mirrors (perhaps the most famous), rugs, chairs, lamps, vases, and gadgetry with cases, masks and so on, which, together with much more, can be found in the house, that also represents an opportunity to visit a typical bourgeois building in Città Studi. Obviously, not all of them are furnished like this, and almost none of them actually have chickens in the courtyard. For those who want more, there is a brand-new work by Cattelan at the Piscina Cozzi and an exhibition at Hangar Bicocca, but there are pigeons there (and not very live ones).

Photo Alberto Zanetti

Toiletpaper Home

Photo Alberto Zanetti

Toiletpaper Home

Photo Alberto Zanetti

A carpet-manifesto on recycling and pollution On a wall in the "hall of waste" of the Museum of Science and Technology, Álvaro Catalán de Ocón exhibits the
the first carpet from a collection made with recycled PET for the Spanish company Gan Rugs, dedicated to the Ganges, the sacred river that boasts the sad record of being the most polluted in the world. Plastic Rivers No. 6 is an impressive and highly accurate textile map taken from Google showing an area of 100 km, with different heights of yarn for different mountains, plains and rivers, made by Indian craftsmen on a digitally printed design. It shows the potential of recycling, but above all it denounces the Western trade for its contamination.
The carpet is on display at the Museum of Science and Technology, Via San Vittore, 21. (Loredana Mascheroni)

Photo courtesy Álvaro Catalán de Ocón

A carpet-manifesto on recycling and pollution

Photo courtesy Álvaro Catalán de Ocón

A carpet-manifesto on recycling and pollution

Photo courtesy Álvaro Catalán de Ocón

ADI Design Museum at Supersalone ADI Design Museum brings its historical archive to the Rho Fiera halls, with an exhibition dedicated to the object that best sums up the value of design: the chair. Since 1954, 34 chairs have been awarded the Compasso d’Oro prize and more than a hundred have received Honourable Mentions. To enhance this immense heritage – its inexhaustible archive of objects and stories – the museum has commissioned architect and researcher Nina Bassoli to curate “Take Your Seat”, the exhibition representing the institution at the “supersalone”. Four of the five sections of the exhibition are in fact distributed among the pavilions of the fair, with the addition of an “extra” part inside the new museum.

Photo Marco Menghi

ADI Design Museum at Supersalone Bassoli investigates for ADI human landscapes, rituals, behaviours, and some of the fundamental issues related to chairs and our time. For each chapter she has asked for the contribution of an architect or architect – Fosbury Architecture + AbNormal, Anna Puigjaner, Matilde Cassani, Davide Rapp – who with video installations explore the topics in a complementary way to the selection of chairs.
The set up, designed by Alessandro Colombo and Perla Gianni Falvo, succeeds in the complicated task of isolating visitors from the hustle and bustle of the “supersalone” and immersing them in a unified environment, without having to separate the exhibition space from the context of the fair. In each island of the exhibition, visitors can choose their own path and look at the masterpieces of Italian design with complete freedom. (Salvatore Peluso)

Photo Marco Menghi

ADI Design Museum at Supersalone

Photo Marco Menghi

Dior reinterprets an icon: the Louis XVI chair At Palazzo Citterio, in the heart of Brera, Dior Maison is showcasing the work of 17 artists called upon to reinterpret one of its iconic emblems: the Louis XVI medallion chair that Christian Dior chose to seat guests at his fashion shows. The "sober, simple, classic and Parisian" character of this chair is distorted by, among others, Constance Guisset's reinterpretation of it as a folding chair, nendo's transformation into a large curved tempered glass armchair, and the Dutch artist Linde Freya Tangelder's reinvention of an aluminium version with three legs and a sloping seat.
Palazzo Citterio, via Brera 12.

Photo Alessandro Garofalo

Dior reinterprets an icon: the Louis XVI chair

Photo Alessandro Garofalo

Dior reinterprets an icon: the Louis XVI chair

Photo Alessandro Garofalo

Lost Graduation Show – Supersalone The unmissable exhibition at Supersalone. Halfway between a Salone Satellite and a Dubai Global Grad Show, this year the Fair will fill the gap of almost two years of distance learning in universities and theses discussed online. At the Lost Graduation Show, students from all over the world can finally present their theses live (and what thesis!) and to the best possible audience. The projects touch the most disparate themes, from humanitarian to climate emergencies, from domestic well-being to new forms of life in nature, in the form of product design, interior, textile, fashion, graphic and interaction design. They must all be seen, one by one. Among the most scenic, surprisingly, we finally find two Italian schools: Politecnico di Milano with Micromort, a speculation on the ‘value of death, and the prototyping of a car by IED Milano in partnership with Suzuki.
Rho Fiera, Halls 2-4 (Marianna Guernieri)

Photo Diedo Ravier

Lost Graduation Show – Supersalone

Photo Diedo Ravier

Certainly spectacularity was not among the priorities of those who participated, but rather the substance, supported by more time to elaborate and refine the projects, on a practical and theoretical level. Should it always be like this? A biennial event? In April there will be another Salone, the more "official" one that will also celebrate the 60th anniversary of the event. Perhaps it could make sense to think of two smaller editions per year, along the lines of Maison Objet? Probably, from a strategic point of view, concentrating everything in a single date is the safest way to remain compact and strong against the competition, as suggested by Philippe Starck. But let's remember that this edition has almost completely excluded the general public.

Hermès – Brera La Pelota is always a guarantee and the French maison has not betrayed the audience of the Salone and the desire for spectacularity. After two years of virtual appointments, Hermès wants a return in the most physical way possible. Five large architectures recalling conceptually five houses, finished in soft lime and hand-decorated by La Scala artisans with colorful geometric patterns host home collections signed by names such as Studio Mumbai or Jasper Morrison. In an organic environment with walls that curve and become supports for objects, warmed by red lose soilon the floor, niche craftsmanship is celebrated. We find a hand-decorated papier-mâché armchair made in Lecce, enameled copper plates made in the Veneto, cashmere dyes from the Punjab, and so on. The installation bears the signature of architect and designer Charlotte Macaux Perelman. La Pelota, via Palermo 10 (Marianna Guerieri)

Photo Marco Menghi

Hermès – Brera

Photo Marco Menghi

Hermès – Brera

Photo Marco Menghi

CTMP Design Auction - Brera From 5 to 18 September at its headquarters in via San Marco 22, Cambi Casa d'Aste will showcase the best of contemporary design: Richard Hutten, Studio Pepe, Bethan Wood, Analogia Project, Objects of common interest and many others. Great international names and emerging talents to discover, an open window on the present and future of design, in an exclusive selection signed by Mr.Lawrence studio. The furniture and objects on display are a selection of the 160 pieces that will be auctioned in the dedicated 'CTMP Design Auction' on 14 September. Via San Marco 22, Brera (Marianna Guerieri)

Courtesy Cambi Casa d’Aste

CTMP Design Auction - Brera

Courtesy Cambi Casa d’Aste

CTMP Design Auction - Brera

Courtesy Cambi Casa d’Aste

Research into materials and new lighting effects - Luceplan A tour of the large showrooms in the city centre cannot miss Luceplan, whose products maintain a great balance between technological and formal research. Among this year's most interesting novelties are the Koinè suspension lamps by Mandalaki Studio, a minimal diffuser with a light source to which a mineral lens has been applied to distribute a wide, homogeneous beam of light, Doi by Meneghello Paolelli Associati, composed of a disc and a spotlight that interact thanks to a magnet that changes the appearance and direction of the light beam, Levante by Marco Spatti, three sails that form a suspension made of an unusual food-like material reminiscent of rice paper. The Luceplan showroom is in Corso Monforte, 7, M1 San Babila (Loredana Mascheroni)

Courtesy Luceplan

Research into materials and new lighting effects

Courtesy Luceplan

Research into materials and new lighting effects

Courtesy Luceplan

Open Talks - Supersalone Perhaps the most successful initiative of the Supersalone: three large Arenas distributed among the various pavilions, each consisting of two tribunes and a central stage to host daily talks and lectures with the best names in the world of design, architecture, art, business and education to address pressing contemporary issues. Curated by Maria Cristina Didero, the program is really generous with appointments distributed throughout the day until Friday, September 10. After hosting in the past few days names such as Hans Ulrich Obrist, Beatriz Colomina, Aric Chen, Lilli Hollein (to name but a few), today it will be the turn of, among others, Michele De Lucchi, Nadja Swarovski, Libby Sellers, Alejandro Aravena, Massimiliano Gioni and Ilaria Bonacossa. In the coming days we will see names such as Carsten Höller, Cecilia Alemani, Bjarke Ingels, Formafantasma, and a selection of films from the Milan Design Film Festival (Tokyo Ride, Honeyland, Precise Poetry. Lina Bo Bardi's Architecture). For those who can’t go to the fair, the events will all be live streamed on the Salone del Mobile website. Rho Fiera (Marianna Guerieri)

Photo Andrea Mariani

Open Talks - Supersalone

Photo Andrea Mariani

Open Talks – Supersalone

Photo Marco Menghi

Icona Design alle Tornerie Tortona “We shape technology”, explains Gigi Gaudio, CEO and founder of Icona Design. The company, founded about ten years ago, has expanded rapidly. Initially based in Turin and Shanghai, it has now opened offices in Los Angeles and Tokyo. “My dream is to design cars for the Japanese market, which are now so functional but so ugly,” smiles Gaudio, who has 60 years of experience in the automotive industry. But Icona is also a project that goes beyond automotive, he explains. In the space in Via Tortona are on display projects for sanitation in collaboration with Sanixair, including a wearable device that creates a negative ion mask, industrial machines that look like space stations, a self-driving robot, a model of a recharging station (we'll be seeing a lot of these in the future), a solar-powered capsule for drinking water in desert landscapes and a project for a smart city on the outskirts of Shanghai. And then, of course, there’s the company’s showpiece, Microlino, the electric microcar: “We haven't invented anything new, we’ve just taken a 70-year-old idea, the Isetta, and adapted it for today”, Gaudio concludes. At Tornerie Tortona, Via Tortona 30, MM1 Porta Genova (Alessandro Scarano)

Courtesy Icona Design

Icona Design alle Tornerie Tortona

Courtesy Icona Design

Icona Design alle Tornerie Tortona

Courtesy Icona Design

Salone and fuorisalone opened on Sunday 5th with access on the first day mainly reserved for the press and with ungenerous opening hours (with most of events closing doors at 6 or 7 pm) and ended on Friday 10th, with few exceptions. Moreover, the citizens who are usually active and enthusiastic participants in the Salone, this time were barely aware of the event: in the city the only banner that betrayed it was a cryptic "Milano is Design is Milano" poster. And think that this was supposed to be a "consumer" edition where you could buy the products on display, even at the fair.

Missed your call - Design Academy “Missed your call” is the exhibition organised by Design Academy Eindhoven to promote the work of Bachelor graduates. DAE’s Graduation Show is one of the most visited and appreciated exhibitions of the Dutch Design Week, which many curators and gallerists look to in order to discover young talents. Skipping the 2020 edition (for obvious reasons), young designers have the opportunity to showcase the school's open and avant-garde approach. Via Vincenzo Monti, 59, M1 Pagano/Tram 19 (Salvatore Peluso)

Photo DSL studio Alessandro Saletta and Melania Dalle Grave

Missed your call - Design Academy

Photo DSL studio Alessandro Saletta and Melania Dalle Grave

Missed your call - Design Academy

Photo DSL studio Alessandro Saletta and Melania Dalle Grave

Kengo Kuma for OPPO - Statale Slightly off the beaten tracks at the Statale, in one of its most hidden cloisters, the installation Bamboo (竹) Ring :||| Weaving a Symphony of Lightness and Form by Kengo Kuma for OPPO appears like a vision. The architect explores the harmonious relationship between man and nature by creating a light and “accurate” sculpture of bamboo and carbon fibre that makes sounds and vibrates in the courtyard of the Statale, encouraging visitors to walk around it. Curator Clare Farrow, who first brought the sculpture to London's V&A during the London Design Festival in 2019, speaks of it as “an old friend who, at the time talked, but now sings”.

The installation is located in the courtyard of the Bagni dell'Università Statale di Milano, via Festa del Perdono 7. On view until 19 September.

Photo Marco Menghi

Kengo Kuma for OPPO - Statale In this iteration of the nomadic installation that “rests lightly on the ground” of the Filarete courtyard, it is the sound of Japanese musician Midori Komachi's violin that complements that of OPPO's digital wellness app, which offers comforting sounds of nature and the city taken from locations around the world, including Reykjavik, Beijing and Tokyo. A sound technology embedded in the installation's woven structure allows sound to move through the space, vibrating and turning the structure into a real musical instrument. At the end of Design Week, Bamboo Ring will land in the mountains of the Val di Sella in Trentino, donated by Oppo to the Land Art Museum, Arte Sella. “Knowing how to combine technology and nature”, says the Japanese architect, “is what I would like to pass on to future generations”: a vision in continuity with that of the company, which interprets technology as an art form. (Giulia Ricci e Bianca Pichler)

Photo courtesy OPPO

Kengo Kuma per OPPO - Statale

Photo courtesy OPPO

Masterly, The Dutch in Milano - 5VIE In its fifth edition, the “Dutch pavilion” of the Fuorisalone, curated by Nicole Uniquole, continues to unite and promote young designers, research projects, production and craftsmanship in the setting of the neo-Renaissance Palazzo Turati (via Meravigli 7). Among the 80+ participants divided between the courtyard (this year submerged by a carpet of orchids) and the two floors of the building, the following are worthy of note: “Elements of Time”, silicone pouf-sculptures by artist Nynke Koster made from casts that replicate architectural details; the green projects by the young studio House of Thol (the terracotta fruit and vegetable holder to keep them fresh is particularly successful). Not to be missed is Stefan Scholten's The Stone House collection, furniture made from travertine waste skilfully combined to create a Terrazzo effect. Palazzo Francesco Turati, Via Meravigli, 9, M1 Cordusio (Elena Sommariva)

Photo Nicole Marnati

Masterly, The Dutch in Milano - 5 VIE

Photo Nicole Marnati

Masterly, The Dutch in Milano - 5 VIE

Photo Nicole Marnati

Materica Marble - Brera Unexpectedly, there is an extra day to visit Materica Marble edition 2021, which involves three established names (Bruther, Johannes Norlander and Francisco Aires Mateus) and six under-40 talents selected through a call (calabrò.cossement, Francesco Rosati + Davide Bacchio, Gabriele Trove, Galli | Cavalcabò, Claudia Carlotta Sabbà + Pierfrancesco Acciani and Scattered Disc Objects) in a challenge with marble. The pieces, collected in a dark setting anticipated by a historic Milanese courtyard, bring out the different interpretations of the material. Sometimes the marble is treated to take its transparency to the extreme, like Bruther's soft screen-curtain; at other times the material becomes monumental and ironic, like Galli | Cavalcabò's column-lamp, or turns into a solid, assertive object, as in the case of the large vase designed by Gabriele Trove. An interesting experimentation on the unique, single-material piece, for those who want to see architecture put to the test with the domestic object. Corso di Porta Nuova 32, M3 Turati
(Giulia Ricci)

Photo courtesy Materica

Materica Marble - Brera

Photo courtesy Materica

Materica Marble - Brera

Photo courtesy Materica

Miyake's ingenious synergies In its refined and minimalist shop designed by Tokujin Yoshioka inside Palazzo Reina, via Bagutta 12, Issey Miyake celebrates creativity with a project born from the collaboration with designers and artists and continues its investigation into the potential of clothes. The process comes before the product. So, with "In the making", Issey Miyake focuses on his "making" and how the creative processes of the latest IM MEN and A-POC Able Issey Miyake proposals are comparable to those of product design. In addition to the collections resulting from the collaboration with artists Tadanori Yokoo and Fabio Bellotti, the showroom also features the work carried out with Triporous™, a new material obtained from rice husks and developed by Sony Group Corporation, which has resulted in TYPE-I (one), a series featuring a special black tone that cannot be obtained with conventional dyeing techniques and which, over time, loses less vividness than traditional blacks, resulting in a longer life. Via Bagutta, 12, M1 San Babila (Loredana Mascheroni)

Photo Valentina Sommariva

Miyake's ingenious synergies

Photo Valentina Sommariva

Miyake's ingenious synergies

Photo Valentina Sommariva

A choice probably dictated by the control of flows to limit assemblies and Covid contagions, so we do not exclude that it can be repeated in the same way next year. Among the novelties of 2021 deserve a big thank you the new bike lanes made by the City of Milan during the quarantine. We expect many more, to complete the existing ones because it is still too dangerous to rely on paths that suddently throw you on the busiest routes, where life is threatened. When it's not raining, the bicycle is the best way to visit the fuorisalone, you can get to the appointments quickly, you can observe the city in turmoil, you can come across unexpected events along the way and you can even reach Rho Fiera. We will also wait for bike racks, that are really scarce. Meanwhile we give a big thank you to everone: designers, artists, curators, photographers, makers, journalists, students, thinkers, organizers, Tenoha, and restaurants.

Exhibition "Cheerfully Optimistic About the Future", by Michael Anastassiades curated by Alberto Salvadori at Fondazione ICA At Fondazione ICA Milan the Cypriot designer exhibits his personal collection of stones and a new series of self-produced lamps.

Fondazione ICA is located in Via Orobia, 26 in Milan. The exhibition is open until 6th January 2022.

“Be Water” TOILETPAPER’s giant wall mural at Cozzi swimming pool In perfect line with the TOILETPAPER editorial project by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, the site-specific installation Be Water is a highlight of the Design Week.

The Cozzi swimming pool is located in Viale Tunisia, 35. Opening hours 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Photo Giovanni Hänninen

1. Gucci Stationery Store The most elegant temporary store at the Fuorisalone is undoubtedly the Gucci store in Via Manzoni 19, where the first Gucci Lifestyle collection is presented. In the windows and in the small, refined premises of a historic jewellery store, everything is meticulously curated, starting with the sign that looks like that of a traditional Italian stationery store from the early 20th century. If the exterior is sober, the interior is designed to surprise: in a small Wunderkammer, or Renaissance study, one can find fans made of wood and silk satin, notebooks (covered in GG Supreme fabric or in Gucci’s new sustainable material, Demetra), cases with coloured pencils and a set of bioresin dice. Among the “special” effects that help immerse visitors (one at a time, so expect a bit of a queue) in a fairytale atmosphere somewhere between Harry Potter and Alice, are the mouse house carved into the wall, the electric train hanging from the ceiling and the chess set that moves by itself.

The Gucci temporary store is located in via Manzoni 19. It can be visited until 17th September, opening hours 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. (Elena Sommariva)

Photo Courtesy Gucci

Alcova’s experimental design in the former Military Hospital of Baggio From the center and the north of Milan, the spotlight now moves to the south, to the Inganni area. Inside the huge complex of the Military Hospital of Baggio, between Via Forze Armate and Via Simone Saint Bon, is the new home of Alcova, the curatorial project by Space Caviar and Studio Vedèt, which for some years now is themust-see destination for the Fuorisalone. Within its 3,500sqm of exhibition space, made of gardens, outdoor paths and ruined buildings covered with vegetation, once inhabited by nuns and nurses, this week the work of 50 exhibitors including independent designers, galleries, schools and innovative brands, can be found.

Alcova is located in via Saint Bon 1, M1 Inganni. Open until 12th September, opening hours 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

(Marianna Guernieri)

Photo Marco Menghi

Fluid Crust Surgery at Marsell Paradise “Which is your favourite?” Raquel Quevedo reaches down and grabs a multiform, shaggy sculpture, a whitish mound that turns blue along the ridges, perfectly sized to fit in the palm of her hand. She says she appreciates its complexity, the cross-references between organic and inorganic, and how each time she finds something new in it. It is one of the 200 sculptures that the Barcelona-based artist presents at Marsell Paradise as possible fossils of the future, thus nothing new that hasn’t already been seen before, yet entirely in line with the mainstream wave of our era, where people at happy hour talk about the post-anthropocene with the same fluency with which we wore a suit in the 1980s.The exhibition is completed by a screening, graphic design works, and a beautiful hardcover book, which combines narrative and non-fiction texts, and in which one can find a font especially created by Quevedo, which also features on the exhibition poster. A choral gaze that embraces the planet. Marsell Paradise is located at Via Privata Rezia, 2, M3 Lodi. The exhibition is open until Saturday 11th September, visiting hours 3 p.m. - 7 p.m. (Alessandro Scarano)

Photo courtesy Marsell Paradise

Photo Marco Menghi

Experimental and collective: the exhibition platform at Base Milan With the (broad) theme of We Will Design, Base brings together a solid group of independent, research-based projects that interpret design as something more than the production of functional objects.

BASE in located in via Bergognone 34 Milano. Open From 5th to 12th September, 10am – 8pm.

3. Nilufar Gallery Nilufar Gallery is celebrating 10 years of encounter between designer Bethan Laura Wood and gallery owner Nina Yashar. With the exhibition “Ornate”, the eclectic and colourful British designer invites us to “travel with the eye and the mind”. With references and reinterpretations of very different worlds - from the British Aesthetic Movement to traditional Japanese Meisen Kimonos - Wood designs a collection that tells of her travels around the globe. Particularly appreciated are the Meisen cabinets and desk, upholstered in Alpi wood, whose pattern refers to the shimmering, almost vibrant patterns of the warp and weft in the Ikat weaving used to produce Meisen fabric.

Nilufar Gallery is in via della Spiga 32, The exhibition is open until 11th September from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Salvatore Peluso)

Photo Mattia Iotti

Sturm&Drang at the Prada Observatory A small cardboard labyrinth that could be a schematic model of a Call of Duty setting, with a host of GoPro lenses looking out from holes in the walls: This is *First Personal Shooter*, the first of the four spaces in which “Sturm&Drang”, a collaboration between the Fondazione Prada and the ETH Zurich, describes CGI not so much in terms of its results, which are now ubiquitous and often impossible to distinguish from what we perhaps call “reality”, but in terms of the construction processes behind it, how it is used and the impact it has on our perception. This is followed by Gibsonian echoes, deconstructed tutorials and Blender screenshots to discuss the relationship between architecture and virtual space. This exhibition is part of a larger annual project, and in some ways a continuation of an exhibition already presented by Prada in Tokyo.

Osservatorio Fondazione Prada is in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, with access next to the Prada store, MM1 Duomo. Open until 12th September, opening hours 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. (Alessandro Scarano)

Photo Courtesy Prada

Camp Design Gallery – Navigli “Camp se acaba, orgía en mi casa” with this words the happy story of one of Milan’s most avant-garde design galleries turns to an end, a happy island founded by Beatrice Bianco in 2015, which had become home and place of exchange of the best emerging designers of the recent years. This is the title of its last exhibition that features an installation by La Cube with a fountain in the center of the gallery, a ‘public’ square in which to say goodbye. For the occasion, it has been produced a limited-edition zine, a little masterpiece entitled “Fine” with contributions from designers, artists, architects, curators and writers who have participated to the vitality of the gallery over the last six and a half years.

Camp is located at 71 Via Giovanni Segantini, next to NABA academy. It is open until 12th September from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. (Marianna Guernieri)

Heineken at Palazzo Serbelloni For this September’s Fuorisalone, Heineken has set up a “reusable” bar in the courtyard of the prestigious Palazzo Serbelloni, saving “6,539 kg of waste, 5,335 kilowatt-hours of energy, 21,128 kg of CO2e emissions and 25,108 litres of water”. The Greener bar is built with wood that fell near Amsterdam’s Heineken brewery, has no flooring (difficult to recycle, they explain), uses cushions made from discarded uniforms, sustainable energy, and so on. All this is accompanied by talks and meetings on sustainability and a lot of Formula 1 - which is not exactly a symbol of ecology, but we’ll get over that. And then DJ sets every night. There’s even a water hose with a crank to cool your beer bottle. The gap between the philosophy of the bar and the elegance of one of Milan’s favourite fashion locations will perhaps prompt a rethink of its aesthetics. This should be the step that will make us like the concept of sustainability more or else we will end up in the cardboard-coloured sadness of the Supersalone.

Palazzo Serbelloni is in Corso Venezia, 16 Milan. Open until 12th September, from 12 p.m. to 10.30 p.m.

(Alessandro Scarano)

Photo Simona Bruno

"Carlo Mollino. Allusioni Iperformali" Triennale Milano presents the exhibition "Carlo Mollino. Allusioni Iperformali", curated by Marco Sammicheli, featuring the collection of furniture designed by Carlo Mollino for Casa Albonico in Turin.

Triennale is in via Alemagna 6, Milan. The exhibition is open from 4th September to 7th November 2021. Opening hours 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.

Nanda Vigo at Fondazione Sozzani The exhibition "Nanda Vigo, incontri ravvicinati. Art, Architecture, Design" shows the different personalities of the Milanese artist, "master of light", effervescent and curious designer. The exhibition project is curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Allegra Ravizza, Archivio Nanda Vigo, and in collaboration with Luca Preti.

The Sozzani Foundation is located in Corso Como 10. Open from 5 September to 1 November 2021, 10.30 a.m. - 8 p.m.

Guiltless Plastic at Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Already a Fuorisalone classic. Gallerist Rossana Orlandi presents the third edition of the RO Plastic Prize, a competition that challenges designers to find solutions to the pollution caused by plastic. The exhibition of the finalist projects of the RO Plastic Prize will be held at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci. The Museum is in Via San Vittore 21, Milan. The exhibition can be visited until 12th September, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Fake/Authentic at Galleria Antonia Jannone Stefania Agostini and Luca Mostarda, founders of the AMArchitectrue office, invite young architects, designers and creatives from 13 different nationalities to exhibit their works in Milan's most famous gallery of architectural drawings. The collective project Fake/Authentic, now in its fourth edition, this time explores the topic Iconic Ironic.

Galleria Antonia Jannone is located in Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi 125, Milan. The exhibition is open until 28 September from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

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