In “A Moveable Feast”, Ernest Hemingway recounted his mad love for the city of Paris: a whirlwind of encounters, love, art, wine, rum, between hotel addresses, cafés and restaurants. We’d like borrow the title of the American writer to try and describe the Milan of this week. A “moveable feast”, in a city on the starting blocks, ready to unleash that energy that has always been its strength – the Futurists already had tried to imprison it in canvases full of tension, smoking machines, construction sites and running horses. Milan, held at bay after a two-year stop, is now ready to welcome the tired and overheated pilgrims of Salone del Mobile in the evening too. No more parties for the few, the city wants to be more inclusive: in addition to the noble palaces and the courtyards and gardens decorated with dance-hall lights, industrial buildings are opening up, as part of extensive urban redevelopment projects, in a noble attempt to preserve the existing and reinvest in the past, giving it new meanings.
Guide to the Milan Design Week parties
Exclusive locations, historic villas, abandoned buildings and open-air green spaces. The best evening events during Milan Design Week where music takes center stage.
Courtesy Snøhetta
Courtesy Lambrate Design District
Courtesy Spazio Fase
Courtesy Bra-very-Bar
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- Cristina Moro
- 07 June 2022
As in a big town festival, doors, museums, swimming pools, rusty shutters and gates of abandoned factories open up: you can take a break, dance, drink, in the De Carlo gardens of the Triennale (7 June, DJ Ilaria Gr, from 6.30 pm and Dj Mace, from 9. 30), by the pool of the Bagni Misteriosi restored by Michele De Lucchi (8 June, Design Party Luce & Acqua, from 7 pm), in the garden of a Liberty villa in the Lambrate area, but you can also go further afield, in the “large-scale” Fuori Salone, to visit Belgian design at Atelier Baranzate and Spazio Fase, in the former paper mill of Alzano Lombardo. The week ends in Piazza del Cannone, for the closing party. The square, around Arco della Pace, saw, in 1946, a crowd of nostalgic monarchists gathered during the referendum for the Italian Republic. On Sunday, instead, the followers – or not – of design will say goodbye. Milan rearranges itself and reconverts to a dynamism of its own, which fills and awakens it; ever more open, broad, and international.
Opening image: Triennale Milano, photo Gianluca Di Ioia
The evening of Monday 6 takes place at one of the sites that will contribute to the transformation of the city in the coming years: the area of the former slaughterhouse of Milan opens to the public before the beginning of the work to build one of Europe's largest social housing projects. The project will include the new educational and cultural centre born from the collaboration of IED, Fondazione Politecnico and the architecture firms Snøhetta, Barreca & La Varra, Chapman Taylor, Cino Zucchi and Stantec. Here, the studio Le Cannibale entrusts the first evening to Tyler Ov Gaia, an ecologist curator and DJ (who lives secluded on the island of Elba). He will accompany the pilgrims of Design Week with his records until the first light of dawn.
Survivors the first day's run-in, with swollen feet and their iPhones already full of photographs, can keep on partying on the evening of 7 June at BASE Milano, in the Tortona area, a historic manufacturing centre from the late 19th century where locomotives and railway carriages were built, disused since the 1970s. Now a regular stop for Salone-goers, the former industrial site defines itself as a “place of lifelong learning at the service of the city and the creative industries”. We will design starts at 10 pm, with house music straight from Bergheim (Berlin's famous techno club) by Tama Sumo and Milanese DJ Fabio Monesi, until 3 am.
Mid-week, lots of coffee, pastries and off we go again. Still young inside, you pretend not to struggle. The day ends in the green space of Giardino Ventura, 3500 square metres of trees in the Lambrate industrial area, around the Art Nouveau villa built by Angelo Bombelli, a metal construction industrialist who worked with the greatest architects and engineers of the 20th century. He built, among other things, the famous Tower in the Park (Torre Branca) designed by Gio Ponti in the gardens of the Triennale, that towered proudly over the city before the archistars’ skyscrapers. From 6 p.m., Giardino Ventura will host the Design AD-VENTURE Festival, with techno house music contaminated by the sound of Chinese electronic music by DJ Luwei and Velasco, a musical project by Francesco Villa, which combines electronic music with traditional sounds.
The more adventurous visitors can go further afield. Tram 12 and a 10-minute walk take you to the Baranzate Ateliers, northwest of Milan, which extend the proposal of the more established neighbourhoods by opening the Necchi sewing machine factory. The abandoned area is home to the Zavantem Ateliers, a place to meet and discover the work of Belgian artists and designers, who in their choice of location declare their goals of regenerating spaces and finding opportunities for collective expansion. The atelier is open daily until 10pm, and on Wednesday 8 hosts Je T’aime Party X Collectible Fair, from 10pm to 4am.
On Thursday evening, the events take place between the areas of Isola Garibaldi and Monumentale: either at the foot of the Bosco Verticale, the garden skyscraper designed by Stefano Boeri Studio and opened in 2014, or in the spaces of Fabbrica del Vapore, the industrial area that in the early 20th century housed Ditta Carminati, Toselli & C., operating in the production of railway and tramway material and reconverted many years ago into a cultural and recreational centre. Here, from 7 pm, the Urban Garden Party promises wine and music.
At the weekend, two evenings away from the usual venues at Spazio Fase’s Carroponte, inside the former Pigna Paper Mill in Alzano Lombardo, 10 minutes from Orio Al Serio Airport. The industrial area is a 33,000 square metre urban regeneration laboratory, which aims to contribute to the socio-economic revival of the area through the memory of its manufacturing roots. On Friday 10 (from 6.30 p.m.) and Saturday 11 (at 9 p.m.), it will host Mu.De. by night, an evening of international electronic music, with German producer Christian Löffler and Lorenzo Senni, head of the experimental label “Presto!?”.
On Sunday 12, the final greetings will be in Piazza del Cannone (from 18.00 to 00.00, with DJ Tagliabue and Fabio Monesi). Those who have not yet had their fill can visit Circolo Arci Biko, a social promotion association and creative space with a soul-black 'n funk soul, in the Barona district. On the occasion of the Design Week, Arci Biko brings the sound of Griselda, an independent hip hop record label, to Italy for the first time (Griselda Official Party, hosted by Rome Streetz). After which, fresh shower and slippers, and a city map to rewrite.