The Crit #27: Milan Design Week 2023
In the wake of Milan Design Week 2023, Disegno’s editors have gathered together thoughts and reflections on selected stories from across the week in this special edition of The Crit.
The episode sees hosts Oli Stratford and India Block each offer a highlight and a lowlight of the festival. They discuss their enjoyment of the fresh ideas and audio formats presented by students from ECAL and Design Academy Eindhoven, which acted as an antidote to the industry at large by putting forward challengingly hopeful ideas of what design could and should be. In counterpart to this hopeful vision they sombrely reflect on racism within the design industry and question how and why racist objects were displayed and celebrated as part of Il Collezionista, an installation exhibited in Campo Base, and why it fell to designer Stephen Burks and publicist Jenny Nguyen to speak out about this racist display.
Elsewhere, the pair express surprise at their enjoyment of Ikea’s display, Assembling the Future Together, and its interesting (if sometimes contradictory) exploration of the value of archival, vintage pieces, and draw parallels with designer Paola Navone and the Slowdown’s Take It Or Leave It – an exhibition-cum-lottery-draw in which the designer gave away 1,000 objects from her personal collection.
Finally, the hosts ponder the dilemma of gentrification that swirls in an undercurrent of hidden politics, urban planning and property development at design weeks.
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Show Notes: Ep.27 - ‘Milan Design Week 2023’
Student work: Elevator Radio by DAE; On The Way to Work and U.F.O.G.O by ECAL – 05:16
Racist objects at Campo Base – 17:16
Take it or Leave It by Paola Navone: 28:31
Assembling the Future Together by Ikea – 00:00
Gentrification of Milan – 38:45
Disegno #35 – 52:32
Credits
All music for The Crit has been created by Yuri Suzuki and Team Suzuki (Adam Cheong-MacLeod and Charlie Carroll) at Pentagram, and our logo was designed by Leonhard Rothmoser.
This episode was recorded at Convene, 22 Bishopsgate. Thank you to everyone at Convene for their kind support. If you’d like to find out more about Convene’s workplaces in London and further afield simply visit convene.com.