2023-04-17 20:45:18
Time.news – The most important week of the year has begun in Milan. They call her “design week”, of course, but it is the deep union of the two souls that characterize a tireless city, sometimes inaccessible, but always in continuous evolution. The first is that of the Salone del Mobile, the other that of Fuorisalone. One, within rho fair, represents the international artisan tradition in which Italian know-how, handed down from generation to generation, has always found its maximum expression.
Among the pavilions we move among the great giants of what they call the “design industry” where decades of knowledge marry innovation, where manual skills dialogue with new technologies and materials bend to design. The other, however, is a continuous explosion of creativity. It disperses throughout the neighbourhoods, contaminates and transforms them between installations, sensory experiences and talks. It is conceptual but also physical. It surprises but makes you think.
The laboratory of the future
From 17 to 23 April Milano becomes, as suggested by the theme of this edition, a true “laboratory of the future” where designers, artists, craftsmen and architects present those works often destined to become trends and fashions.
The organizers explain that the common thread in which exhibitors and artists have moved, in a year of re-departures and re-meetings, is that of imagining “the future, in relation to the uniqueness of the times in which we live”.
This year, therefore, “is a laboratory that becomes an opportunity for discussion to build alternative ideas through moments of collective dialogue, to focus on opportunities and critical issues, but also contradictions” of a society that is awakening after a pandemic and crisis cheap. All with the desire to try to put “a shared working method” on the table. In other words, the right way “to build solutions in the present to allow us a future that could otherwise become a mirage”.
Circularity, sustainability, environment. From the Velasca Towera symbolic building on the Milanese skyline, ready to give life to a digital experience entirely designed by the designer Elena Salmistraro, at the botanical garden which once again hosts a project by Eni all dedicated to mobility, testifying to the company’s commitment to achieving zero net emissions by 2050.
In the “Tortona district”, on the other hand, the return of “We will design” is not to be missed, the format that Base has been hosting for several years with exhibitions, workshops and appointments which, this year, embrace the dimensions enclosed in the acronym IDEA – Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility. But this is just the tip of the iceberg that hides hundreds of other appointments, stimuli and initiatives. The important thing is to go around, discover, contaminate yourself.
To complete this, the numbers are added. The 800 events, as mentioned, scattered throughout the various city districts. The related activities generated, over 220 million euros. The expected visitors, more than 325 thousand. The hotels, almost all sold out, with peaks of 95% between 17 and 20 April. So few chances that many Milanese, to earn some extra money, have opened their houses and apartments.
Above all to those who come from abroad, 65% of the total, up on last year. The estimates are those of the Lombard Confcommercio but the feeling in the city, between euphoria and the desire for toasts and meetings, is that of great occasions. Not this year either. Lastly, there will be no special initiatives.
There will once again be the ‘e.Reporter’ 100 students from the Industrial Design and Architecture faculties of the Milan Polytechnic who will tell, with an expert eye, everything that happens during the design week. But the ‘Fuorisalone Award’ is also back, the prize dedicated to the most memorable events. It will be difficult to choose in this vast sea of proposals, ideas and sharing. In short, Milan is once again ready to set trends and become the capital of design. And to put Italy in the spotlight of the world.
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