Restorative audiovisual installation *Forest Wandering* by Swedish design studio Front (image: Kvadrat).

A second day at Milan’s Salone del Mobile saw the Disegno team take in projects from Front and Aldo Bakker, as well as exploring ECAL’s musical collaboration with Yamaha.

Soft pebbles

In 2020, the Swedish design studio Front launched Design by Nature, a project with Moroso in which the studio transformed elements from the landscape into furniture: rocks coated in moss, mounds and snowdrifts, captured as 3D scans of wilderness before being transformed into soft seating upholstered in an experimental fabric designed with Kvadrat that replicated the textures of nature. In the intervening period, Front have continued their research on the theme, further industrialising their designs to create a commercial furniture collection. The collection, Pebble Rubble, is simpler than the earlier works (creating modular furniture forms with the soft curvature of rocks in nature), but no less effective, with the studio having collaborated with Kvadrat Febrik to create Arda, a knitted textile that apes textures discovered in the forest. The collection itself is pleasing, but the installation in which the studio have exhibited it is particularly strong. Taking over Milan’s Teatro Filodrammatici, Forest Wandering is an audiovisual work in which the theatre’s darkened stage has been filled with Front’s designs, which form a canvas for projected films from nature, accompanied by a complementary soundscape. Restful, restorative and vey beautiful, Forest Wandering is a strong showing for Front and a compelling introduction to the new collection.

Forest Wandering: Teatro Filodrammatici di Milano, via Filodrammatici 1

Everything including the bathroom sink

Tom Dixon has turned his hand to toilets, launching Liquid, his holistic bathroom range for VitrA. “I’ve wanted to do a bathroom for ages,” confided Dixon, who says that he turned down other brands because they wouldn’t let him pursue his vision creating a one-stop bathroom set, from tiles to toilet brush. “Luckily, VitrA were mad enough,” he enthused. Liquid is all Dixon’s signature heft and rounded edges, in that fun, maximum-plumped look that is very in with furniture right now – think taking a bike pump to your 90s inflatable sofa. Dixon’s reasoning for this aesthetic is somewhat reactionary, a thumbing of his nose at the over-serious and over-complicated taps that brands have been pumping out, buoyed by the advancements offered by 3D printing and its ilk. “Technology has allowed ceramics to become more complicated,” says Dixon, “but that’s not the normal way for clay to behave.” Roundness, instead, is the order of the day, with an earthy rudeness permeating the collection. Sink plugs are fat silver blobs begging to be prodded, which look, Dixon exclaimed, “a bit like a belly button!” But the cute curves are also practical: “You don’t want to knock yourself out if you’re naked,” deadpanned Dixon about his removal of all sharp or angular bathroom edges. In fact, a generous practicality is Liquid’s secret weapon. Chunky taps are clearly signposted with a big H or C because the designer was frustrated at scalding himself when trying to shower in unfamiliar bathrooms; while a bathroom cabinet is fronted with breathable mesh to “make cleaning easier”. Yes, Liquid includes jaunty public urinals and a standout indoor/outdoor shower, but Dixon was concerned with domesticity and making a bathroom that’s easy to clean. Maybe it’s an industrial designer’s commitment to function, but Disegno now trusts that Tom Dixon would never leave the loo seat up.

Liquid: Hall 24, Stand G05-G07, Fiera Milano

The shape of sound

The Swiss design school ECAL is known for its experimental collaborations with brands looking for a fresh design impetus (in the past, Disegno has particularly enjoyed its work with Samsung on televisions), and its project for the 2022 Salone is a fine example of the form: Yamaha Sound Machines. Collaborating with the Japanese brand’s Design Laboratory, the school’s MA Product Design students have developed a series of speculative objects that aim to reintroduce physicality to the experience of listening to music. Guided by designer Camille Blin, the resultant projects are charming and witting, prodding at the ways in which we enjoy music during an age of streaming (particularly during the height of the pandemic, when the project was completed) and proposing playful alternatives that offer a more spatialised form for the medium: Till Ronacher’s Stagespeaker is a miniature, desk-based speaker set for streamed concerts; Silvio Rebholz’s Spezi a mixer and speaker for multiple bluetooth inputs that allows you to fade in and out audio channels from multiple devices; and Sound Frame by Jisan Chung offers a system in which a speaker only plays a song when it detects that a pre-register object has been placed inside it (replacing record collections with physical objects). It is a small display (designed by Anthony Guex around a 1970s-esque mustard yellow curtain), but the wit, creativity and invention of the students is on full display throughout – for reflections on how we consume and enjoy audio, it is hard to beat.

Yamaha Sound Machines: Spazio Orso 16

New forms for pot

Design is increasingly interested in marijuana (and you can read Disegno’s interview with Simone Bonanni of Milanese design company Weed’d here), and one of the best explorations of the terrain that we have seen is owed to the artist and designer Aldo Bakker. Collaborating with the Waterford crystal brand J. HILL’s Standard, Bakker has created Pot Variations, a small exhibition of sculptural forms that are beautiful in their own right and which, should you desire, would also be very useful for getting high with. At the core of the collection, and from which all the other pieces grew, is the HopStep pot – a small crystal vessel that has been kiln cast around a void (a complicated process born out of a research project with the Corning Museum of Glass). It is a gorgeous form, with thick crystal coating its inner chamber and narrow exit channel, and one that Bakker has clearly taken pains over in order to execute precisely. From HopStep, Bakker went on to develop the Cloud pipe and Moustache ashtray, with all three designs subsequently produced across multiple materials including blown glass, brass, stone and porcelain. It is a compelling body of sculptural work and one that shows the value of allowing designers the freedom to experiment: although the forms did not begin life as smoking objects, Bakker’s designs can now provide a route into a fresh market for J. HILL’s Standard. For both visitors and J. HILL’s Standard, Pot Variations is an unexpected, but delightful treat.

Pot Variations: via Monte Napoleone 17

Milan Diaries: Day Two

Milan Diaries: Day Three

Milan Diaries: Day One