I’ve recently returned from Italy where I attended one of the most highly anticipated events in the design industry, Milan Design Week, that took place from the 17th to the 23rd of April. The Salone del Mobile trade show was held alongside an expansive array of external activations, known as the Fuorisalone festival.
The focus of this year’s Salone del Mobile was “Euroluce: The City of Lights,” uplifting innovative leaders in the lighting industry from all across the globe. After pounding the pavement to cover Salone Del Mobile and Euroluce show floors as well as hundreds of external events, exhibitions, and brand activations, I will share a few favorites here.
I am truly awed by these three wonderful events and some of the artful and innovative sustainable and circular designs featured there, inspired by how many designers and manufacturers are embracing these forward-thinking and vital approaches to the craft.
Salone del Mobile.Milano 2023
The Salone del Mobile returned this year to “showcase sustainability and address the theme in a transversal way. Reuse, regeneration, circularity, and energy saving were at the heart of the event, but attention was also paid to the sources of materials, new installations that can be dismantled and reused, innovative production methods, and products designed with a circular approach.”
Salone del Mobile is pioneering a movement toward more sustainable trade shows, truly living its mission as they proceed toward ISO 20121 certification — the international standard for sustainable events — and as a member of the United Nations Global Compact: a global pact to help adopt both sustainable and socially responsible policies.
I have long felt that traditional trade show displays generate a disturbing amount of waste. So, I was quite encouraged by the absence of single-use carpeting at Salone, and inspired by how many installations this year were crafted by upcycling materials from previous years, or using regenerative and modular raw materials that can easily be reused — such as those from Lago, Pedrali, and Gandia Blasco.
A personal passion of mine is the use of unlikely recycled materials for interior and product design, so I was fascinated by the work of Caimi, which uses nylon waste from items like fishing nets to create its circular ECONYL® fabric.
Euroluce 2023
This biennial exhibition devoted to lighting has returned to Milan Design Week after four years of absence. I was delighted to see them spotlighting increasingly efficient LED sources and many circularly manufactured and distributed low-impact products and raw materials.
Here, Lombardini22 — a Milanese architecture and engineering firm — rethought the needs of companies and visitors and created a new layout concept that decisively breaks away from the classic yet disorienting ‘checkerboard’ path typical of trade shows, opting instead for one inspired by the shapes of Italian villages, and inspired by the theory of flows.
Rather than being stand-centric, their approach was human-centric and visitor experience-based — taking into account the flow of people and energy through the space. Euroluce 2023 took the form of a new city of lights, boasting an irregular, fluid, and free circular route.
According to their site, this layout offers a “double advantage: more visibility for the exhibitors, given the greater probability that the visitor will be able to pass through all the stands of the fair, and a more engaging experience for people, who will be able to visit the whole fair in one shorter time.” I personally loved this concept and hope the success of the experience leads to this model being implemented at other shows globally!
At the show, one notable standout was from Artemide, a heralded leader in the field of sustainable lighting. This year they featured the sleek and minimal ALE.01 suspension lamp, designed by HASSELL, which is crafted from a biocomposite (containing FSC-certified organic wood waste) and bioplastics (derived from sugar cane, a highly-renewable resource).
Fuorisalone
This year’s theme at Fuorisalone was “Future Laboratory” which aimed to focus on climate issues, the sustainability of metropolises, and production processes via immersive displays in unlikely and usually inaccessible locations throughout the city.
RE;COLLECTIVE @ Dropcity was this year’s winner of the Sustainability Mention, at which Korean fashion brand RE;CODE, Japanese design unit DEKASEGI, and 9 groups of designers from East Asia (Japan, Korea, and China), promoted sustainability in their respective fields, in an exhibition themed “Upcycle.”
This innovative display tackled the process of reusing industrial waste in designs from fashion to furniture design, lighting, and more.
I was particularly struck by the CONTINUUM livespace installation, which felt like a merging of exhibition and experimental performance art, inviting visitors to feel, smell, and taste the future.
CONTINUUM united Ukrainian visionaries from 5 respective fields: design, fashion, craft, culinary, and perfumery in the spirit of freedom, respect for nature, and consistency; as created by Ukrainian-born designer and cultural heritage architect, Victoria Yakusha.
Proving once again that luxury can be sustainable, Miuccia Prada teamed with Formafantasma to curate Prada Frames: a symposium that invited the brilliant minds of architects, doctors, designers, psychologists, anthropologists, activists, and experts in multiple fields to share their research on the relationship between design and the environment.
“This year, the theme was ‘Materials in Flux,’ where the subject of waste – its origins, its value chain, and its transformative properties – was unpacked in an interrogation of its complexities.”
British anthropologist Tim Ingold kicked off proceedings at the Laveni and Avati-designed Teatro Filodrammatici, introducing waste as matter in constant transformation. In the sessions that followed, the discussion turned to waste as a lifeline in global material flows and its role in value systems as well as design was further evaluated and explored.
For obvious reasons, this event was right up my alley! To watch recordings of these sessions, click here.
I was quite taken by the sustainable dancing branch lighting at Bì.Li.Co, a show by Maximilian Marchesani at Nilufar Gallery, curated by Studio Vedèt — a fascinating and beautiful balance between the natural and the artificial.
INTERNI Design Re-Evolution was another immersive favorite of mine featuring multiple outdoor activations in six locations across the city.
You can see in this Reel a glimpse of some of the installations at University of Statale.
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MAD Architects, Interni, and AXA IM ALTS presented Momentum, a giant cube whose skin reflected the surroundings at Statale University’s courtyard during the day, becoming its own ever-changing art form.
The lighting within and the fog surrounding it created a new character as night fell and the work became translucent and ethereal.
“Walk the Talk – Moving Energy” — a game-style installation — was situated among the paths of the Brera Botanical Garden to explore the theme of the transformation of urban mobility.
Hundreds of boxes, including multimedia designs, traced a path that wound through the trees and plants at Brera, creating luminescent and aural effects that shifted and evolved throughout the day.
I wish I could have stayed longer to explore more exhibits and activations among all of these events, but I had to jet off to Dallas, TX for my panel and appearances at EarthX’s Earth Day events.
I am grateful for the time I had wandering through such a delightful and well-curated assortment of inspirations, and deeply motivated by how many designers are taking the causes of sustainability and circularity to heart this year.
Already looking forward to Milan Design Week 2024! It truly is a one-of-a-kind design destination, featuring leading creative minds and emerging talents in the art, furniture, and lighting industry, in one of the most dynamic cities in the world.
LC
Image Credit:
Photo #1: Laurence Carr
Photo #2: Econyl
Photo #3: Lombardini22
Photo #4: Artemide
Photo #5: Cewo by PINWU Design Studio
Photo #6: Nicola Colia
Photo #7: Prada
Photo #8: Chopping by Multistandard
Photo #9: Nilufar Gallery
Photo #10: parametric-architecture.com
Photo #11: fuorisalone.it
