Milano Design Week, 5 things to see today

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.

Installation by Marc Leschelier

Installation by Schemata Architects

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)

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)

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)

“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)

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.

Installation by Azuma Makoto

Installation by Daan Roosegaarde

Installation by Ann Veronica Janssens

Installation by Vincent Van Duysen