Review of Fuorisalone, Milan Design Week 2012, Italy

Fuorisalone and Milan design week takes place at venues across Milan from April 16 to 22, 2012. Fuorisalone is one of the most important international design events. The event, which takes place at the same time as the Salone del Mobile, design took form in many unexpected ways positioning Milan as the undefeated meeting point for design. Thousands of design afficionados from across the globe made their way into the worlds biggest trade show. The inspiration by creative minds was palpable. Each event stand presented a new philosophy of design.

Milan Design Week, one of the most important events related to the world of design and architecture at international level. As the most important event in the world related to design and furniture, Fuorisalone is the set of events distributed in different areas of Milan. Fuorisalone 2012 with more events and more areas popping up around the city in the ultimate celebration of Design. Be amazed by the amount of effort that goes into producing everything during the week, from each individual product, to group shows, events, installations and ingenious brand extensions. Enjoy exhibitions, installations, performances and workshops, also many events dedicated to entertainment, with concerts, aperitifs, DJ sets and parties.

Milano Design Week, the top international designevent, with more than 2,000 exhibitors, makes Milan the world’s centre of design andcreativity. The Fuorisalone animated the Milan Design Week, premiering the latest trends for the forthcoming year and heralding a tidal wave of events, exhibitions and presentations, enhancing, once again, the central role of the city on topics such as the culture of design and the importance of the Made in Italy worldwide.

The trends of Milan Design Week 2012, the 80’s vibe that permeated the stalls of the show. It seemed that almost every vendor had chosen to include at least one dash of bright color, primarily in jewel tones and more than occasionally neon.Featured were bold stripes in black and white, sexy, curvy forms, outré golds, and an intensity which could almost have veered into the tacky. In addition to new materials, outdoor seating became multifunctional, created with all of the durability and functionality needed for outdoor spaces. The worldwide push towards environmentalism obviously influenced.

Art and creativity are certainly the leitmotif for the special events organized for the week of the Salone and Fuorisalone. Fashion, design, showcooking and workshops and even more parties, themed evenings and super exclusive parties enliven the areas of Via Tortona and Brera, inviting enthusiasts, curious people and exhibitors to get involved by showing the most innovative researches “outside” the traditional canons.

The Design Experience has become a fundamental rendezvous for anyone in Milan during Design Week, the countless exclusive events dedicated to design in all its forms filled with the city. Fuorisalone has given the opportunity to attend incredible events and exhibitions, where you can absorb incredible art installations all over the city of Milan. The plethora of installations, immersive experiences and exhibition itineraries breaching the borders where design and its collateral worlds meet, blend and overlap.

The Fuorisalone fills the entire city with all things design and makes it the mecca of design for a week. There are design installations, parties and events. The Fuorisalone is sure to make any design addict’s heart beat a little faster… There are pop up design installations and exhibitions in old warehouses, historic buildings as well as traditional residential buildings. Sometimes you may stumble across the most amazing exhibitions in the most unexpected places.

As per tradition, the biggest international brands and designers exhibit their novelties in the most exclusive showrooms around the city. The Fuorisalone is also an opportunity to rediscover with different eyes known places such as the Porta Venezia area and the Science Museum, or to discover for the first time locations never seen before, such as those that open their doors to visitors in the Ventura area. The Milan Design Week pays to emerging young designers, who find space in particular in the Tortona area and Superstudio Più.

Brera is a place full of charm in which Fashion and Design live together. It is a place full of creative minds where culture mixes with shopping, exhibitions. The circuit, Ventura Lambrate, a neighborhood that in the past years has attracted attention during Milan Design Week is characterized by creativity, quality, and internationalism.

Baxter made the night all about leather transforming the Diana Majestic Hotel into a private club in which a selected crowd where treated to the best music, drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Missoni made its presence feel in this year event with a stand in the Saloni and various exhibitions outside the trade show.

Fuorisalone was first created in the 80’s as the Salone del Mobile with events and evening soirees, thanks to the of companies working in the furnishing and industrial design sectors. Currently, it is expanding into many related sectors including automotive, technology, telecommunications, art, fashion and food. Every year, in April, Salone and Fuorisalone define the Milan Design Week, the most important event in the world for design. The entire episode of the weeklong celebration is referred to as Milan Design Week, an event engaging the entire city, from Rho to Piazza Duomo.

Fuorisalone is the official guide to the event. Istitutionally recognised and supported, it has also been the reference point for the Interareas project, ordered by Milan City Council in the sphere of the ‘Milano Creativa’ programme which aims to share the requests of the different staff involved in the Design Week, since 2012. Fuorisalone is a communication platform which offers a system of support to companies, agencies, private people or associations for the conception, creation and promotion of events during the Design Week.

Fuorisalone is a tool that talks about the events of the Milan Design Week, experiencing them at first hand, bringing facts and key players to the fore against the background of a city that lives changing situations rotating around the design and creativity worlds for a week. During the Design Week, Fuorisalone evokes the atmosphere of a week in which Milan changes guise, the design capital is presented to its community through the form of the event par excellence. The aim of Fuorisalone is the promotion of design as an event, performance and installation in the urban fabric.

Milan’s Fuorisalone is a fluid entity in continuous expansion, flourishing each year in April with the leading trends in design and mapping out the most interesting areas of the city. The flamboyant festival with more than a thousand events in well-established design districts. Fuorisalone sees Milan’s showrooms, galleries and 19th-century palazzos taken over by installations, events, and parties for a six-day celebration of design, beauty, and innovation. All told, around 1,500 Fuorisalone events are scattered throughout the city this year.

Fuorisalone returns to Milan with its long and elusive program of events: there are presentations of new products, special set-ups in stores, extraordinary showroom openings, hidden locations, meetings with designers, exhibitions and cultural itineraries. The areas with the highest concentration of events, to which are added individual locations, such as the Cascina Cuccagna or the Rotonda della Besana, and key points such as the Triennale which, for a week, turns into a real temple of design.

Fuorisalone 2012 has been an incredible success throughout Milan Design Week. It has provided the most exciting brands and artists, and their presentation of the latest trends and luxurious products. Selected as stages for a truly variegated, stimulating and multifaceted narrative, in terms of culture, trends, technological research, materials. To respond to the growing demand for improvement of our quality of life. Whether the focus is on the city or the individual dwelling, on the present or an ecosustainable, high-performance future.

For one week, Milan was transformed into an open gallery, with historical palazzos and museums, public places and little hidden gems welcoming design aficionados from the world over. It has established a necessary bridge between artists and attendees, creating a vibe of memorable networking. The city is full of design and events, inside palaces, courtyards, buildings, piazzas, museums, abandoned factories, galleries, showrooms and other locations, organized in zones or districts – Durini, San Babila, Quadrilatero, Magenta, 5vie, Porta Venezia, Porta Vittoria, Tortona, Ventura-Centrale, Bovisa, Triennale, Brera, Isola and Porta Nuova…

Design Districts
The events of Fuorisalone are spread all over Milan, but are concentrated in some main areas.

Brera Design District
Brera is a place full of charm and culture, a world accustomed to anticipating trends, where art, fashion and design intertwine. The design district par excellence on the occasion of the days of the Fuorisalone, opens the doors of its shops, the most prestigious showrooms and temporary spaces in private places of suggestive beauty, to citizens and tourists curious to discover this hidden corner of a Milan outside from time.

Discover the new Brera Experience. The best way to discover and get to know the district’s places and secrets. Brera Design District also features a selection of the best commercial activities, i.e. those that best represent the identity of this historic district of Milan between design, lifestyle, food, art and culture. The Brera Design District offers, as always, a large number of events that animate the neighborhood and which alternate with the many design showrooms hosted here.

Brera Design District attracts the largest number of events and is the most visited and most representative district of the Fuorisalone. Born with the 2010 edition, the Brera Design Week has been able to increase over the years the number and quality of the events it hosts, for many, Fuorisalone means Brera and Brera Design Week is the reference platform, open to collaboration with companies and designers thanks to dedicated project formats.

Brera has the charm of the Milan art district and has a somewhat Parisian, bohemian personality. When you stroll through its streets, especially in April during the Fuorisalone, you can breathe an extravagant, young and international atmosphere. Brera is an iconic place. It has always been the bohemian place in Milan par excellence, where you can breathe that artsy atmosphere, thanks also to the Academy and the studios of photographers and painters. Now Brera is increasingly linked to design and this passage has respected the creative and special soul of the neighborhood, indeed it has brought new life.

Brera Design District was born in the historic Milanese district of Brera, a place that for centuries has provided a fundamental contribution to the cultural, artistic and commercial life of the city. The boundaries of BDD range from the Bastioni di Porta Nuova to via Broletto, from via Legnano to via Montenapoleone, including historic buildings of great cultural importance such as the Academy of Fine Arts, the Piccolo Teatro and the Basilica San Simpliciano.

Brera Design District aims to communicate Brera as a reference point for Milanese design, a territorial marketing operation which, through a communication system dedicated to the promotion of excellence and strengths active in the area, intends to enrich the proposal. cultural appeal and the district’s appeal capable of combining tradition and innovation in the widespread field of design.

On the occasion of the Fuori Salone 2012, the projects of the Brera Design District are back. Also this year interesting events developed in the district throughout the period was proposed, involving historical brands, new showrooms and all the activities related to the prestigious district of Milan.

90 and more events belonging to the district for the Fuorisalone event, an enormous success, above all expectations that brings Brera to the center of the events of the Milanese Design Week for the quality and number of exhibitors who color the streets of the district red thanks to the signage system designed for the event which consist of flags on rows, signage flags for each point of sale and vertical totems designed by Alulife.

Brera Design District aims to communicate Brera as a reference point for Milanese design, a territorial marketing operation which, through a communication system dedicated to the promotion of excellence and strengths active in the area, intends to enrich the proposal. cultural appeal and the district’s appeal capable of combining tradition and innovation in the widespread field of design.

For the April appointment of the Brera Design District there are many events and commercial and cultural activities planned, with thematic itineraries linked to sustainable design, greenery and art up to the Brera Design Night on April 20, an evening that include a extraordinary opening of selected showrooms and temporary spaces.

Porta Romana Design District
Studiolabo and Fuorisalone, in collaboration with IED and ELITA, offer a communication project designed specifically for the Porta Romana area, bringing together the excellences that stand out in the area with events and initiatives related to the world of design, but not only that, during the Fuorisalone week.

Tortona Design Week
Tortona Around Design is the new fuorisalone in the Tortona-Savona area, a project that aims to qualify the territory and the dense network of fuorisalone events and initiatives taking place in Milan, in the area around via Savona and via Tortona, highlighting its strengths and the most interesting exhibits. Tortona Around Design is aimed at an international audience of professionals and design enthusiasts, attentive to quality and the constant search for new stimuli.

Tortona Around Design is an itinerary rich in contents, a wide and multifaceted exhibition offer, a privileged point of view on the world of design that ranges from furniture design to technologies, from interactive installations to artistic performances, from large collective exhibitions for the promotion of young talents to the most established international brands of industrial design.

Tortona Design Week gathered the most important Italian and international design brands, together with renowned designers around the fascinating former industrial spaces that populate the area., young talents, incubators that have always made it a destination awaited and visited by thousands of people.

Tortona Around Design was born from the collaboration between Tortona Locations and Studiolabo. Tortona Design Week is an extraordinary window on the world: in fact, also for this edition of the Fuorisalone, international collectives are present in the spaces of the creative circuit launched over ten years ago in the Tortona district.

Now in its third edition, Tortona Design Week 2013 is increasingly an urban laboratory dedicated to the representation, development and remodeling of what we could simply define: contemporaneity. The theme of this edition is the relationship between present and future. The very idea of ​​contemporaneity: a present in the making that continually remodels itself.

A non-neutral container, rather an agent of change and economic growth: an incubator for young talents, a development engine for brands and professionals, a showcase and stage for big names. The variety and breadth of the technical offer is the reason for the success of this area, the ability to renew itself every time is its stylistic signature.

Design – today more than ever – is a global language. It is the alphabet and metrics of our age. Design contaminates the most heterogeneous sectors: fashion, automotive, food, entertainment, services… All involved in a continuous transition that finds reasons for expression and redefinition precisely through design.

Ventura Lambrate District
Ventura Lambrate, an industrial district in the northeast of Milan transforms into a temporary curated design hub. Within this area Organisation in Design – the initiator and producer of Ventura Lambrate – provides a stage for the most promising designers, studios, labels, galleries, institutions, academies and students from over the world. Visitors can move through the big industrial factory halls and intimate galleries to encounter the newest developments in design, though-provoking installations and the growing capacity of designers to expand their boundaries to design research. If overwhelmed with all these expressions of design, one can cool off and relax at one of the multiple pop-up creative restaurants and cafes.

Ventura Lambrate, a new and completely curated exhibition district. The project started in 2010 and quickly grew to become a cutting-edge design district with internationally acclaimed creatives, never-before-seen niche projects and extraordinary pop-up restaurants. A selection of international debuting and established designers, academies, institutions, companies and labels have the opportunity to present their creations here, in a coherent design circuit to the large, influential and professional audience of the Milan Design Week.

With every edition Ventura Lambrate is shaped by its continuous focus on the essence of design and on designers’ growing capacity to expand their boundaries to research, self-production, performances and other fields such as health-care and science. Exhibitions coming from all around the globe run through each other at the individual spaces and the clustered theme-furnished locations in and around the streets of ‘Lambrate’, a vibrant transitional area between urban and industrial in the northeast of Milan.

The Ventura Projects are curated exhibition areas dedicated to present international designers, design studios, design labels and brands, design institutions and galleries. Each Ventura Project presents a coherency of carefully selected exhibitions, temporary initiatives, as well as special projects, creative restaurants, etc. The Ventura Projects attract a large professional and influential audience consisting of journalist, photographers, bloggers, cultural institutions, curators and representatives from the corporate world.

The first Ventura Project originated in 2009, when – after 10 years of experience in scouting design talents and organising exhibitions in Milan – Organisation in Design met the architect and cultural entrepreneur Mariano Pichler, who was working on a major requalification project to regenerate the post-industrial borough “Lambrate” in Milan. Starting from the charming atmosphere of the Lambrate district and the desire to create a never-before-seen area during Milan’s prestigious Design Week, Organisation in Design launched the Ventura Lambrate show.

After Ventura Lambrate’s successful first and second edition, the Ventura Projects have expanded into established exhibitory circuits: the annual editions of Ventura Lambrate, the biennial Ventura Interieur and the special edition of Ventura Berlin. Every edition is committed to present the most interesting expressions of contemporary design.

Now in its third edition, The exhibitor selection process was based on principles that had already characterized the 2010 edition: creativity, quality, experimentation and content. Ventura Lambrate 2011 placed further and greater attention on the concepts of diversity and internationality, and also in 2012 this district is proposed as one of the most interesting of the Milanese design week.

Porta Venezia in Design | Liberty
Porta Venezia In Design, the fuorisalone circuit that combines design and art with the architectural and decorative heritage of the Liberty style. The idea of this circuit, is to highlight points include design and furnishing, hospitality and leisure, with good food and wine, architectural firms, workshops that highlight the artisan aspect, sometimes ‘hidden’ in courtyards, others on the road. Also the cultural aspect, which highlights the architectural angle, revealing the attraction has not been accessible for years. Visitors could enter to admire this secret location, magnificent and rich of art deco.

Interesting news in the area, which is undergoing a major transformation in recent years, with entrances to realities linked to the world of architecture and 3D design. “Creativity” applied to all sectors. The collaboration between various realities – commercial, cultural – that live in the area and have favorably welcomed the project. Porta Venezia Design District, in a historic district, dense due to the strong architectural trace left by the liberty style (the belle époque), a central area, which boasts important points related to design, art, architecture and culture.

An area that has been offering, for some years now, individual exhibition projects that attract the attention of the public and sector employees. It hosts important companies in the design / furniture sector, locations, professional studios, period buildings and historical monuments, art galleries and cultural centers. The design / art events come communicated together with the Liberty route, which includes the main buildings of this period.

“Porta Venezia in Design | Liberty” is the off-show circuit that combines design and art innovations from showrooms, shops and companies with the architectural and decorative heritage of the Liberty style of which this area of ​​the city is particularly rich. To which is added the food & wine route thanks to the collaboration of Slow Food Milan and Feeding Milan.

In its first edition, it presents itself to the audience of the fuorisalone as a double circuit: a design / art path and a cultural focus centered on Liberty. ‘Porta Venezia in Design | Liberty ‘combines 24 points, including showrooms, shops and companies, which exhibit the latest in design and art, with the architectural and decorative heritage of the Art Nouveau style of 16 wonderful buildings that characterize this area of the city. Made also thanks to the collaboration of technical partners – DuPont Tyvek, Essential, Jannelli & Volpi and Operad’Arte – and some media partners, it is a project conceived by Nicoletta Murialdo.

Special Events
Itineraries that include the events of Design Week related to the most important themes of this edition.

Mecenate Area Design
Milan, a city open to the future and Mediterranean gateway to Europe, is the place where Design, Fashion, Culture and Music meet in a closing event dedicated to the Design Week. After the success of the previous editions, Design Diffusion Network celebrates the closing of the 2012 design week with a single big night event in collaboration with MAD (Mecenate Area Design) and with some of the most important realities active in Milan including I AM A RICH BITCH, MEET2BIZ , UNIVERSITY.COM, WOMADE, PWP and POPSTARZ.

International line up, futuristic installations curated by the European Institute of Design in Milan and a fascinating location inserted in a complex where the architectural recovery of industrial spaces originally used for the production of airplanes creates an unmissable atmosphere for design lovers. A party with a strongly international flavor for young designers, creatives and endlessly curious.

MAD / Mecenate Area Design is a project by Officine del Volo and East End Studios, in collaboration with Studiolabo, Fuorisalone and the Milano Design Network circuit. In its first edition it presents itself to the audience of the fuorisalone with two important night events.

Most
Tom Dixon aims to transform the Museum of Science and Technology into the new epicenter of the Milanese Design Week. The Most project by Tom Dixon, with the help of the curator Martina Mondadori, intends to give a new pole of reference to professionals and enthusiasts. The most important meeting point of world design, a space for quiet contemplation or chaotic energy, a platform for exchange for great ideas. All visitors to the Most have the opportunity to take advantage of the Soda Bar, the eco-friendly bar offered by SodaStream.

The 40,000 square meters made available to the museum, including halls and cloisters, are thus preparing to welcome the more than 30 exhibitors who have joined the Most project. Luxury brands such as Cartier and popular brands such as Nivea, which on this occasion joins the British team of Studio Toogood for the ‘La Cura’ project, join up with leading names in the world design scene. The task of transforming the ambitions of the Most project into a concrete reality made up of set-ups, stands, installations, reception facilities for exhibitors, visitors and the press has been entrusted to Piano B, which takes care of the entire production of the Most and the coordination of all the exhibitors.

Temporary Museum For New Design
The idea of ​​a “museum” format, in a contemporary and emotional sense, which would enhance content and culture, avant-garde and roots, thanks also to the commitment of major international brands, was a great success, imitated by many and also requested by the abroad. Today, faced with the fragmentation of production and self-production, the imposition of bio-architecture, the multiplication of producing countries, the increasingly young age of designers, of increasingly varied origins, the new unstoppable market created by e-commerce, strong is the demand for renewal, which moves without a priori snobberies on the path of the search for good design all over the world and in every area.

The new edition of the Temporary Museum for New Design organized for the Fuori Salone by Superstudio Group, based on a project by Gisella Borioli and with the art direction of Giulio Cappellini, unfolds as always in the two iconic locations in the Tortona area: the great Superstudio Più, exhibition and creativity center, in via Tortona 27 (10,000 m2) and the historic Superstudio 13, the famous pioneering photographic studios of the area opened in 1983, in via Forcella 13 / Bugatti 9 (2,000 m2).

The attention to change has renewed the formula and brought new projects: it is Global Design, noting that in the new millennium the influence of design, understood as a tension towards increasingly emotional, playful, functional, technological, individual, seductive “things” is overflowing from the simple “invention” of new furnishings to solutions for every sector of life, from the devices we use every moment, to cars, to fashion, to the use of “green”, to more traditional or innovative materials, to art, to objects and moments of everyday life, to the extreme expressions of food-design or nail-design that express this trend once more.

Fuorisalone Design Party by Hyundai
Fuorisalone Design Party by Hyundai is the most exclusive event of the design week, Friday 20 April at Officine del Volo, in Mecenate 76. The exhibition is dedicated to the preview launch of the HYUNDAI CREATIVE LAB, a platform and creative laboratory aimed at the widespread world of design. The exclusive partner of the evening was ARCHITONIC with a dedicated bar area. Colorful presences of outdoor furniture by Plust Collection.

Hyundai Motor Company Italy renews its support for the main event that sees Milan as the undisputed protagonist of international design. On the occasion of the Salone del Mobile week, in fact, Hyundai was the Main Sponsor of Brera Design District, the beating heart of the initiatives aimed at the public during Design Week for the second consecutive year. the Hyundai Creative Lab.

Hyundai Creative Lab is a creative laboratory, aimed at the community of Italian and foreign designers and creatives, with the aim of promoting the culture of design by supporting the ideas of young designers in the world of creativity and widespread design with particular attention to the themes of automotive and sustainable mobility.

Elita Design Week
The 2012 edition of the usual Sundaypark Special Design Week Closing Party by Elita and Fuorisalone.it is part of the sixth edition of Elita milano, design week music & arts festival. Elita Design Awards overturns the point of view of the many awards that are awarded in the field of design, enhancing the creativity and capacity for innovation of companies that, through talented designers and architects, propose creative interventions capable of involving visitors, transform Milan into a stage full of happenings that attracts a more varied and international audience than any other Lombard initiative.

A team made up of representatives of elita festival, IED Milano, Fuorisalone.it, FUTURE CONCEPT LAB explore Zona Tortona, Porta romana design, Brera Design District, the Triennale, the historic downtown area with the presence of Interni and Ventura Lambrate in search of the best 15 productions. This second edition of ELITA DESIGN AWARDS, in line with the experimental and research character of elita festival, is enriched by the IED Sound award assigned by IED Milano to the best sound design of the installations.

The 15 video reportages on the candidates, shot and edited by IED students, was presented at the Franco Parenti Theater in Milan before the award ceremony, headequorter, elita festival headquarters. A final jury composed of Rossella Bertolazzi (IED Visual Communication), Dino Lupelli (elita festival), Cristian Confalonieri (Fuorisalone.it), Valentina Ventrelli (Future Concept lab), with the president of the jury Lorenzo Palmeri, decide the winner of this second edition.

Franco Bolelli (Philosopher and writer), Stefano Boeri (Councilor for Culture, Fashion, Design), moderated by Paolo Ferrarini (Future Concept Lab), Claudio Nelli (Urban File), Marco Zamperini (Chief Innovation Officer from Value Team), do a 360-degree panoramic view of the city, or rather the places in the city that in recent years have been able to become a stable reference point for the events of the Fuori Salone, catalyzing visitors and experiences, suggesting a mapping as well as physical, mental in the experience of urban exploration during the week of the show.