Milan Diaries 2023: Day Two
Perusing the shelves of the Preppers Pantry from Mudac at Drop City (Image: Disegno).
Our second day in Milan complete, the Disegno team shares its reflections from visits to Salone Satellite, Bocci Milan, and exhibitions at Drop City.
X by Elevator Radio for Design Academy Eindhoven at Salone Satellite (Image: Disegno).
Tuned in
There are multiple challenges facing exhibitors at design fairs, ranging from the sheer cost of presenting their work over the course of the week (space at trade fairs is not cheap), to the environmental impact of shipping works and travel, and larger questions over what is (and is not) even worth exhibiting in a format notorious for its wastefulness. These issues are felt particularly keenly at schools, given their remit for exploring and enabling new modes of practice within the industry, and offering reflective critique of the field to which they provide an entrance point. Kudos, then, to Design Academy Eindhoven, whose X project has elegantly picked its way through the thicket. Rather than exhibit works from students (which can lead to difficult decisions as to whose work is and is not selected ), the school has given over control of its 2023 Milan offering to its student-run radio station, Elevator Radio. Having packed a van with audio equipment and a mixture of materials that have been variously donated or salvaged from previous presentations, the students behind Elevator Radio have driven to Milan and built their own studio within the Salone Satellite portion of its Salone del Mobile trade fair, from which they are broadcasting daily meetings, roundtable discussions, roaming reports and phone-ins. It is a simple but beautiful idea (and one that, coincidentally, designer Silvio Rebholz from ECAL is exploring a variant of through his project The Salone Pick-Up), with the station offering valuable critique and analysis of design from the Rho fairgrounds – a welcome burst of incisive reflection emanating from within the core of the industry’s commercial operation. The project’s title, X, is drawn from its use as both a symbol for the unknown, but also as a signifier of collaboration or commixture, with the station set to discuss themes such as Crisis x Critique, Performance x Production, and Words x Objects over the course of the week. A simple idea, then, but one that feels spot on in both its thoughtfulness and commitment to a minimal environmental footprint during a time of climate crisis.
X: Booth A18, Salone Satellite Milan Fairgrounds, Rho
Minim+Aid by Nendo features in the Prepper’s Pantry (image: Disegno).
Be Prepared
What would a designer’s dream nuclear bunker look like? If that is a question you have ever pondered, or even fantasised about on darker news days, then head over to Tunnel 46 at Dropcity and experience your dreams come true. Prepper’s Pantry: Objects that Save Lives is an exhibition from Mudac and Anniina Koivu that invites the audience to look beyond the stereotypes about survivalists as lone tinfoil-behatted weirdos or ammunition-hoarding patriots, and asks what preparedness means in design. Simple yet stunningly effective exhibition design brings the scene to life, courtesy of Camille Blin, Anthony Guex and Christian Spiess, with graphic design by Frederik Mahler-Andersen. Welcomed by the blaring emergency red of the welcome sign, you enter the old tunnel (Dropcity is an unimpeachable setting for this particular installation) to a soundtrack of retro nuclear disaster preparedness broadcasts. Set into the metal sides of the bunker are cultural and media artefacts relating to different nation’s approaches to protecting their citizens from various human and natural disasters. Stepping into the bunker proper, the stark metal shelves are presented like a highly curated museum, only one that you’d want to see out an apocalypse in. It’s a bunker that would be the envy of all, complete with the chicly minimalist Minim+Aid survival kit by Nendo and washable nappy kits from Sumo Baby. Alongside are plenty of practical items that wouldn’t necessarily be thought of as design, from camping showers to iodine pills, protective gear to multitools. There’s even some prettily packaged tinned fish, so you can have a very on-trend snack while you wait out the end of the world.
Prepper’s Pantry: Objects that Save Lives: Tunnel 46, Dropcity, Via Sammartini 48
Streamlined steam seems
Architectural algorithms and catwalk looks may not seem like an obvious match at first, but the collaboration between Issey Miyake and Nature Architects, Inc, is opening up a world of possibilities, from the sartorial and beyond. The fashion brand’s Milan store has become a stage for an exhibition, with racks of clothes forming the backdrop to Thinking Design, Making Design: Type-V Nature Architects. Sculptural dresses and jackets, tautly inflated balls and bulbous lighting forms demonstrate the highly varied potential of a new material technique that marries the technical processes of architecture with the craft of garment creation. Nature Architects has taken Steam Stretch, the heat-reactive yarn that forms the basis of A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake, and applied its trademarked Direct Functional Modelling framework. A garment is modelled digitally in 3D then flattened to a 2D pattern with a heat map guide applied to the Steam Stretch fabric. By tracing the pattern with a steam device, the yarn puckers to form a garment that requires the bare minimum of cutting and stitching, while eliminating the wasted material, time and labour required by traditional pattern-based garment design. While most fashion houses commit themselves to the endless cycle of starting again from scratch each season, Issey Miyake’s commitment to iterating on A-POC (A Piece Of Clothing), a concept first presented by Miyake himself in 1997, is testament to the sustainable power of staying true to core values. With the passing of its founder and namesake last year, it’s all the more poignant to see young designers (Nature Architects, Inc all met at Tokyo University a handful of years ago) iterate and improve upon the simple yet genius idea of creating a wearable piece of art from a single stretch of fabric. The pieces created in collaboration with the practice are still at concept stage, but Milan Design Week also represents the first time that the A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake, which debuted in 2021, is available outside of Japan. Meanwhile, Nature Architects, Inc has big dreams for the possibilities offered by coding with A-POC ABLE yarn, but we won’t spoil the surprise of the final room in the exhibition – you’ll have to go see for yourself.
Thinking Design, Making Design: Type-V Nature Architects: Via Bagutta 12
A living space in the new Bocci Milan apartment (Image: Cortili Photo).
A different space
Picking up on the theme of different modes and sites of display explored by Design Academy Eindhoven, although in radically different form, was the Canadian design brand Bocci, which opened its new Bocci Milan apartment in the city centre. Having previously exhibited as part of the Salone’s Euroluce display for lighting (a format that is not ideal for Bocci, whose pieces are typically large – necessitating a costly stand – and more experimental than what you might expect to find within a trade fair), the brand has invested in a space of its own – the idea being that this investment will give Bocci both greater control over the display of its work, and also be gradually recouped through no longer having to invest in temporary spaces. Rather than create a conventional showroom, Bocci has followed the example of brands such as Emeco (whose Emeco House is featured in Disegno #32) and designed a space that is simultaneously a showcase for the brand, a working apartment for Bocci’s staff and guests when they visit the city, and an exhibition/studio space from which Bocci hopes to run writer and artist residencies from the new apartment. The result, executed by Bocci’s design team in conjunction with Paolo Cossu Architects and Dentice/Cadei Landscape, are beautiful – it’s certainly a cut (/many, many cuts) above the Airbnbs that the Disegno team have been staying in – and provides a clear opportunity for Bocci to stretch its wings and provide a dedicated home for its commercial offering in Europe. Given its level of polish, however, the new apartment does not offer a reflection on the more messy and alchemical nature of the design processes that Bocci’s creative director Omer Arbel employs in his work (which were explored in Disegno #28). Bocci’s commercial designs provide the financial muscle that enables Arbel’s wider work within design and architecture, but also emerge as something closer to a byproduct of his more free-ranging experiments within material science and design than the results of traditional product development. Fortunately, the brand seems to have foreseen this – an exhibition and studio space dedicated to sharing this aspect of the company’s work is scheduled to open in Berlin in September 2023.
Bocci Milan: Via Giuseppe Rovani 20
Refoam by we+ on display at Obscure Solutions (image: Disegno).
Problems solved
Design’s penchant for solutionism – the fervent belief that every problem humans create for themselves can be magicked away by technology – has come in for well-deserved criticism recently. But don’t let the premise of The Thinking Piece’s Obscure Solutions put you off – there are some exciting projects tucked away in this archway underneath Centrale Station. The Thinking Piece is a new platform set up by design journalist Takahiro Tsuchida, and Hokuto Ando and Toshiya Hayash, founders of Tokyo-based practice we+, to highlight designers engaging with social issues. The first edition of Obscure Solutions was held in April 2022 in Tokyo, where the work of 19 designers was exhibited, auctioned off and the proceeds donated to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. Milan Design Week marks its overseas debut, and The Thinking Place is presenting the work of Takt Project, Sae Honda, Satomi Minoshima, Takuto Ohta and we+. As well as being Instagram-friendly, the backdrop of moody post-industrial concrete of the tunnels along Via Sammartini is a fitting backdrop for designs attempting to come to terms with problems we often make for ourselves. This is an interactive exhibition, and visitors are encouraged to touch and play – particularly with the satisfying clatter of the slinkies attached to Takuto Ohta’s Afterglow lamps, which he created to add an engagement with lighting beyond mere vision (it’s unclear what pressing social issue this solves, but they’re very cool to experience). You can also take a seat on Satomi Minoshima’s Inflatable Leather collection of pleasingly plump chairs that she created to ease the strain on city renters who find themselves moving house constantly. No more begging friends to help lug your sofa up and down three flights of stairs, and leather is a serious upgrade on the sweaty plastic inflatable chairs beloved of teens in the 90s. Particularly eye-catching is Refoam, monolithic stools and benches that appear to be hewn from a strange green marbled stone, until closer inspection reveals they have been moulded out of waste styrofoam. Refoam is the result of an ongoing research project from we+ that is trying to add value to styrofoam “ingots” – the heat-densified foam created by Tokyo’s recycling plants that are usually sold overseas to Europe and China, where they are broken down further into granules and turned into cheap plastic goods with presumably limited lifespans. It’s a solution for downcycling that would genuinely make a difference. With all the fascinating projects on display at Dropcity, Obscure Solutions is well worth your consideration.
Obscure Solutions: Dropcity, Via Sammartini 48