Sostenibilità
Showcasing good design
Thousands visited Milan last week during the 50th Furniture Fair. But the Fringe festival stole the show
Milan has opened its doors to visitors who have flocked in their thousands to take part in the design world’s biggest event: the Salone Internazionale del Mobile. For the whole week (April 12-17) the Milanese fairgrounds at Rho, on the outskirts of Italy’s most fashionable city, will be hosting almost 3 thousand exhibitors and expects close to 250 thousand visitors.
The furniture fair celebrate’s its 50th anniversary this year and is called Fifty Years Young, partly in honour of its birthday and partly to ward off fears that the crisis has affected its vision and drive. If last year the Icelandic ash cloud had served to dampen its impact – many international visitors were unable to reach Milan due to the multiple flight cancellations – this year the Fair had to prove that world events would not get in its way but rather be a force and excuse for success.
Climate change, waste, pollution, security, resilience, interdependence, poverty. In the face of some of the greatest challenges humanity is facing in the coming decades, the world’s designers have come up with a myriad of solutions. The showcase for some of the more innovative solutions and cutting edge creations, however, is not the Fair itself but rather its fringe festival, which in Milan is known as the “fuori salone” – literally, the “outdoor living room”.
For the duration of the Furniture Fair (and sometimes for a long while afterwards) the whole of Milan is transformed into an open air design park. Offices, shops, galleries, bars and even the streets themselves are loaned to designers, architects, artists and madmen. Imagination is left to run wild and while the results may not always be beautiful, harmonious or inspiring they are unlikely to leave you cold.
But you won’t just find interesting shapes at Milan’s Fuori Salone. To mark the event, Vita Europe has caught up with some of the more inspiring designs that attempt to find an answer to our daily concerns.
Read the interviews:
