Milan Diaries: Day Three

The third day at Milan’s Salone del Mobile included Disegno getting excited about joints with Konstantin Grcic, applauding careful repairs from Loewe, and finally kicking back to watch some telly on Formafantasma and Cristiana Perrella’s canary-yellow display of Mario Bellini’s cult classic sofa.

The art of repair

Installations from luxury brands at Salone tend to be a patchy affair: while they are occasionally bestowed with an impressive sense of spectacle that comes from a bumper budget, they are all too frequently self-indulgent and content-light. Congratulations to Loewe, then, who this year managed to avoid the pitfalls and deliver one of the best shows of the fair. Weave, Restore, Renew is a reflection upon repair and the additional value that can be brought to objects when properly cared for and updated. In Repaired in Spain, a series of antique natural fibre baskets have been handed over to Spanish architects, who have lovingly restored and updated them using leather (a nod to Japanese kintsugi and its use of gold to elevate repairs). The results are beautiful (expertly displayed in the courtyard of the Palazzo Isimbardi) and carry an important message: in a week devoted to consumption and the pursuit of newness, it is a pleasure to see a show that highlights the value restoration and renewal, and which champions the craft skills that enable such approaches. The icing on the cake, however, is the exhibition’s additional display of a series of traditional Galician rainwear, created using the coroza technique for weaving natural fibres. Shaped like hirsute samurais, with more than a touch of The Wicker Man about them, these garments are displayed in formation in the centre of the Palazzo: glorious sentinels to the pleasure of craft traditions.

Weave, Restore, Renew: Palazzo Isimbardi, Corso Monforte 35

Bench by Konstantin Grcic for Plank

Inspired by the launch of U-Joints, a book by Anniina Koivu and Andrea Caputo earlier this week, Disegno paid particular attention to the construction of furniture when studying new launches in Milan this week. The book, which is a weighty 943 pages long, presents joints, connections and fastenings within design and architecture. So Disegno was delighted that Italian furniture brand Plank put the joint of its new collection Bench and Bench Table in focus. Created by Konstantin Grcic, it is designed to enable easy assembly and disassembly, making the process of recycling and reuse easier. The joint that enables this is a pair of steel plates connecting the leg with the bench seat or table top by one slotting in to the other via a steel peg. It’s a construction that is extremely sturdy, but also very simple. The design of the bench and table is just three equally wide and thick wooden planks slotted together to form a load-bearing structure. Hopefully, this heralds a new design language in an age of climate emergency: one where materials and construction need not be pared back or made simpler for the sake of considering the circularity of a product’s life. It’s a new type of minimalism that we are sure to see more of in future.

Hall 20, Stand D09, Fiera Milano

Sense and sustainability

Sustainability’s reign as design’s buzziest buzzword continued unchallenged at Salone. Every brand’s stand was keen to semaphore their commitment to the environment, either directly in the signage keywords, or in a pervasive eco aesthetic. Even these rubbish bins put out everywhere were made of flimsy cardboard that could, presumably, be pulped and remade afterwards, like an ouroboros of recycling. Colour schemes and material palettes leaned heavily towards natural woods and a soothing hue of matte sage green (could climate-anxiety green be the the new millennial pink?). Plants were everywhere. There was such a surplus of foliage that Disegno worried at points it had accidentally stumbled into the Chelsea Flower Show, while the steamy bathroom hall took on the humid air and tropical vibe of a chicly reimagined Rainforest Cafe. The cost of cultivating, transporting and endeavouring to keep alive so much greenery must have been prohibitive. Hopefully all the plants have a loving home to go to afterwards (maybe Stefano Boeri could rehabilitate them in one of his Vertical Forest developments). Beneath this beatific biophilic facade lurked a sense of creeping unease, however. There was a jarring mismatch between the claims of sustainability and the sheer level of consumerism-as-wellness on display. Every bathroom has to feel like a spa; every kitchen a home chef’s paradise. Visitors repetitively opened and closed gigantic fridges like those found on queasily hypnotic pantry restocking videos popular on TikTok. Obviously the point of a trade fair is to sell things to people, with all the environmental costs of production that incurs. And some brands were clearly prepared to walk the walk with sustainability (see above for hopeful work from Plank and Loewe). But aping eco-consciousness while selling a vision of hyper-consumerism made claims of commitment to the former ring a little hollow.

Cinema seating

The re-edition of a sofa (even a sofa as pleasant as Mario Bellini’s Le Mura) is unlikely to set pulses racing, so full credit to Tacchini for transforming an event that could easily have represented drudgery into something witty and memorable. The brand partnered with designers Formafantasma and art critic Cristiana Perrella to create Cinema Tacchini, a screening room installed in Spazio Maiocchi. Scattering canary-yellow Le Muras around the space in different configurations (smartly highlighting the modularity that is the central virtue of the piece), Formafantasma and Perrella then installed banks of cathode ray televisions that screen scenes from movie history that revolve around the sofa. With shots from American History X, The Big Lebowski and Broken Flowers flickering across the screen (trying to identify each clip is great fun), visitors could kick back and relax on Bellini’s sofas in a space that shows off their beauty and versatility, but with a decidedly light touch. Furniture launches can often be overblown and slip into the absurd in their efforts to seem artistic or culturally relevant, but Formafantasma and Perrella have struck the perfect balance: the best way to show off a sofa is to let people use it as they would at home. And what’s nicer than sitting back and watching some movies?

Cinema Tacchini: Spazio Maiocchi, via Achille Maiocchi 7

Seventy-five years young

Europe’s design schools appear to be in a reflective mood this Milan. Lausanne’s ECAL has published The ECAL Manual of Style, a book exploring the school’s teaching methodology, while Design Academy Eindhoven has chosen to mark its 75th anniversary (having been founded as the Akademie voor Industriële Vormgeving) with an “intergenerational graduation show” that brings together seven decades’ worth of final projects. It is a compelling conceit (with the school putting out an open call to graduates for submissions and launching further research to fill in projects from its earlier years), with students from the 1960s rubbing shoulders with those from the 2020s: there are present stars (the likes of Chris Kabel and Christien Meindertsma), emerging talents, and figures from the past who are now perhaps less known, all given a chance to exhibit the works with which they debuted. It is a wam, generous tribute to 75 years’ of design education and visitors could spend hours comparing projects to observe the ways in which design has changed during the academy’s existence. Yet no simple or singular narrative emerges from such scrutiny. While earlier projects are often more industrial or product focused than contemporary works from the school, as you might expect, this is not true of every case. Annick van Der Wissel’s De Wisselpuzzel (1974), for instance, is a series of tools developed in conjunction with physiotherapists to aid in exercises intended to help patients improve their hand-eye coordination – while the final object’s manifestation as a wooden puzzle perhaps betrays its age, the subject matter and collaborative methodology by which van Der Wissel worked still seems thoroughly contemporary. This, of course, is the fun of the show: DAE 75! is a treasure trove in which you can follow the threads and disconnects from across 75 years of Design Academy Eindhoven. Here’s to 75 more!

DAE 75!: Spazio Orso 16

Onions Have Layers

Milan Diaries: Day Two