Milan Design Week embraced a summery feel for its 2018 edition, with more things to see dotted across the City. New Designers joined the descent upon Milan for its week of all things design; opening on Tuesday, the city invited local and global designers to share ideas. Here’s our round-up of everything we saw and loved, and a heads up on upcoming trends including; originality, new materials, sustainability, collaborative making and micro living, plus the renaissance of traditional craftsmanship.
Where last year there was a prevalence of bringing plants into the home, (so perfectly epitomised by the Ikea festival, who sadly weren’t present this year), interiors can now be seen to be taking a broader look at caring for our planet. Materials recycled, reformed and recast breathe life back into objects to ensure design is constantly being reinvented, rather than producing for purely productions sake.
VITRA TYPECASTING
Presenting an exhibition of iconic and forgotten Vitra products, TYPECASTING by Vitra for Milan Design Week 2018 played ode to the company’s history of being as much about furniture as it is about the ‘personal’. It juxtaposed functionality with an identifiable style of futuristic simplicities and bright colour throughout. Set up in a museum format inside a multipurpose sports centre/ basketball court, 200 objects were curated thematically, somewhat embodying Vitra’s reflection of creating function for key tasks in our daily lives without compromising strong ready-to-buy design. We loved this celebration of iconic emblems whilst tracing a timeline of what we could continue to expect from the brand with renewed excitement.
TREND ALERT – Our surroundings and products reflect us, taking in a personality of their own. ‘Purposeful purchasing’ and a return to community.
STILL HERE – Communal living – reimaging the sofa/ living room as a multipurpose space, no longer private comfort, but a place for shared living and working space.
VENTURA FUTURE
The future is in good hands. The most inspiring and exciting part of Milan Design Week (in our opinion) did not disappoint this year. Reining the focus of design away from the final product and to the processes and purposes behind it, the visionary display of emerging designers from studios and design schools around the world gave a glimpse not only of what design is looking like at the moment, but how we could expect it to look way into the future.
Well placed in an old Milanese building whose prior inhabitants included the futurist movement of poets, architects, radical thinkers and artists- the student designers mapped out their creations. Read on for our 5 themes for now and the future.
MASS UNIQUENESS – Is there such thing as an original idea? Young designers question whether you can now claim or own an idea and what it means to be unique. Djillie Roes video project showed hundreds of the same process occurring with a pen piercing through a plastic bag – the end result of the object looking different every time.
NEW MATERIALS – With waste management and resource depletion increasingly in the public eye and no longer just a concern of the environmentalist or environmentally conscious designer, new uses of recycled materials are being continually developed. Ventura Future saw a focus on innovative new materials, with a new form of plastic casting vases by Japanese designer Kodai Iwamoto, and a reuse eelgrass into ropes by Ulrike Silz & Marc Wejda.
SUSTAINABLE – This year a key concept has not only been the continued emphasis on reuse, recycle and anti-consumerism, but also the mental transformation of how we see our surroundings. DIN x Miriam Harig references this by suggesting that rather than buying and replacing our interiors, we rearrange instead- bringing an illusion of change, to ensure that we reject a throwaway future. The use of technology and its innovation and modular nature also played a role in exploring how we can reduce food waste, with prototypes mapped out including one to monitor fridge contents to prevent over buying.
DESIGN FOR PLAY– Activities to engage in interactive design further drew focus back to materials and making, with Design School Kolding enabling a ‘hands-on-dialogue’ between colours and dyes within the design process. This is very much the Ikea perfected model of people gaining a greater understanding and respect for the process when they engage in a small part of making. We loved this idea!
THE PERSONAL AS POLITICAL – Rethinking what design means with a focus on who the designer is and their reflection and response to society. Saskia van Stein & Agata Jaworska’s work captured their views on society, exploring how design is inherently political. Rather than a tangible piece of design, videos and installations further helped trace the conversation back to its core of what the purpose of design is, and how we can expect to see a more highly politicised (as opposed to consumerist) version of design by this generation. Our highlights also included Lieke Vernooy’s ,melting wax sculptures reflecting gender fluidity, Abel Wolff’s snapshot into a post-apocalyptic world envisioning how generations will look back at us today, posing the question of what we will be remembered for, plus Lisa Van Casand’s ‘The mushroom club’ which used a 3D printer constantly producing distorted replicas of mushrooms to reflect inaccuracies in representing historical events in the public consciousness, challenging designs role in questioning, unpicking and rewriting social times.
MILANO CENTRALE MAPPED
- EMERGING – Schloss Hollenegg for Design
Careful craftsmanship was perfectly demonstrated by Schloss Hollenegg for Design with our favourites being the bloom cabinet by Adam & Arthur, and Omer Arbel’s exquisite copper mesh glass vase collection- both seeing elements of nature inspired within their design.
TREND ALERT: CRAFTSMANSHIP
- ESTABLISHED – Open Sky – COS x Phillip K Smith III
Now a staple highlight of Milan Design Week, the installation by COS and its guest designer saw a sculptural installation characterised by ever-changing spatial and temporal elements set-up across a court-yard, with mirror reflections allowing a transformation of how each person experienced the space – (the brightness was also interestingly juxtaposed with the darker, light sensitive installation of last year).
TREND ALERT: LARGE SCALE INSTALLATION