Milan Design Week is one of the annual highlights of the global design calendar – but the pandemic and global lockdowns put the star-studded event on hiatus for 18 months. This year, however, the world’s biggest celebration of design returns to Milan, eschewing the regular April dates to run 5-10 September.
Salone del Mobile will take place, as always, at the sprawling Rho Fiera showground. Unsurprisingly, the event has been scaled back and reimagined for our new normal. Curated by Milanese architect Stefano Boeri – who has dubbed this year’s edition ‘Supersalone’ – it will still present some of the most exciting new launches of the year.
Gufram presents a gigantic PRATONE® to celebrate 50 years of its most visionary seat.
For their return to Milan Design Week, Gufram has chosen one of the most characteristic squares in the city to celebrate the 50th anniversary of PRATONE®, one of its best-known icons, in grand style.
Just a few steps from the Duomo, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele and the Teatro alla Scala – is the background of SUPER PRATONE. A huge inflatable PRATONE®, in an intense green colour, will rise in the middle of the mannerist architectures. SUPER PRATONE is a sort of visionary blow-up of the classic PRATONE® - conceived in 1971 by Ceretti, Derossi & Rosso - as it maintains its colour, proportions and traditional "softness". The 8-meter square base supports 34 stems that are 5.30 meters high.
Brionvega Presents the New Mario Bellini Totem
Brionvega presents the re-edition of the innovative and iconic Totem, a hi-fi stereo system designed by the eight-time Compasso d'Oro Mario Bellini in 1971.
The Totem is a famous design work conceived by the architect Mario Bellini and launched on the market in 1971 by Brionvega. An object that encompasses the search for primary forms, such as the simple volume of a cube and which leads to modularity and composability, hiding the functions of a Hi-Fi. From this apparent cube, Bellini brings out a stereo system, he called Totem rr130. The Totem, together with other works by Bellini and Brionvega, is exhibited in the most important modern art museums around the world including the MoMa in New York.
The Totem provides first-class sound power and quality thanks to the solutions by top sound professionals. Each speaker is equipped with a 2-and-a-half-way speaker system (one mechanical reflex loading woofer, one mid-woofer and one tweeter). The speakers are removable, so they can also be positioned in other points of the room far from the console and with sufficient sound power to cover medium and large rooms.
Tom Dixon
Tom Dixon has returned to the Manzoni, the Brand’s hub and restaurant on Via Manzoni, to host a luminosity exhibition featuring the latest collections: the mesmerising Melt Chandeliers, made of shades which are half metallised to create an extraordinary optic effect. As well as the Press lights, thick and transparent ribbed glass which create diffusion of the light source and projects linear and stripy patterns.
Tom says of Italy’s design capital: ‘My first encounter with Milan opened my eyes to an immense international design world that had previously been invisible from my British perspective. The passion for design of the Milanese and the understanding of its transformative power remains with me to this day.”
Tom Dixon Studio has also staged an exhibition at next-door neighbour Valextra, the iconic Italian luxury leather goods brand. Inspired by the archives of the Milanese masters Gio Ponti, Ettore Sottsass and Achille Castiglioni, ‘Black Light’ - a display of 10 monumental LED light forms by Tom Dixon and Austrian lighting specialists Prolicht - will sit alongside Valextra’s new Chiaroscuro handbag capsule collection.
e15
e15 has introduced bar stool Tank by Danish architect David Thulstrup. With its new and clean silhouette, Tank challenges the classic typology of a bar stool and simultaneously combines function and mono-materiality in its reduced form.
Tank is David Thulstrup's first design for e15. The bar stool was originally a custom-made piece for the interior concept of Gasoline Grill in the French Quarter in Copenhagen. Tank is now available in two different heights and made of solid European oak.
La Chance
La Chance has collaborated with Hannes Peer for a custom art filled installation in his Milan Atelier. Hannes Peer Architecture is an architecture and design studio that specialises in luxury retail, hospitality and residential spaces, founded in 2009 and based in Milan.
For Milan 2021 the constant theme is the search for eclecticism as well as high quality in the design at all scales through the study of the close relationship between architecture, historical context and new technologies mediating between craftsmanship and industrial production. The language used in the design is stratified and eclectic, uniting poetic vision and rigorous design. The studio’s projects are recognizable by their strong iconographic identity, based upon continuous research on colours and materials and the contamination between the various contemporary languages.
Most notable is La Chance’s latest Marmini Collection. The Marmini collection was deeply inspired by the work and research of New York artist and art critic Scott Burton. One of Burton’s most pivotal early works is Rock Chair where the artist imbued functionality into a two- ton boulder of sierra granite by carving an “L-shape” into its core. A chair has qualities that one can play with, it is democratic, malleable and comfortable, at the same time a chair can also be intended as an artistic object, a sculpture that always will have also a clear specific use value.
