This week, the AD PRO team has joined forces with our friends at AD Italia to report from the ground at Milan Design Week and Salone del Mobile, in their first editions since 2019. Below, the Italian editors recap the second day of festivities. This article originally appeared on AD Italia.
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There is a holiday feel, but the pace is lively. Queues are back for the star exhibits (we had forgotten them). Design week insiders (among others) exchange tips on their must-sees, and so do we. Here are our highlights from the second day, seen and approved by AD.
“What do I like this design week? There is a rediscovered human warmth,” Luca Nichetto says, sipping an espresso at 10 a.m. We begin day two of the Milan design fair with breakfast with the designer in the historic Cova patisserie on Via Montenapoleone. Just outside are the Hermès store windows—a theater filled with mythological quotes created by the designer himself: Fashion is fascinated by the ability of design to imagine new worlds. Meanwhile, around the streets and showrooms, plenty of visitors looking for ideas (some even sporting Bermuda shorts and fresh tans—it is the beginning of September!) add to the buzz around the event. The quest for beauty has just begun.
By Nina (Yashar), the lady of design
On the near outskirts of Milan, in a former industrial space, we find Nilufar Depot, the XL exhibition space for a must-see show. The central space is populated by artist Pietro Consagra’s Matacubi functional sculptures (they can be used as benches) made from 1985 onwards; in the basement, Khaled El Mays’s “neo-Tiki” furniture engages in lively dialogue with Federica Perazzoli’s textile frescoes. On the other floors, we find a formidable mix of avant-garde and masters from the past. And at the top of the building is a space dedicated to the rising star of 3D design, Andrés Reisinger.
With Raawii by Omar Sosa and Kvadrat by Peter Saville, design is not conventional
If there is one thing that unites Omar Sosa, founder of the magazine Apartamento, with Peter Saville, creator of such memorable album covers as Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, it is that both come from the world of graphics, and today they debut as product designers. Saville’s collaborations with Kvadrat for the Technicolor textile collection inspired by the fleeces of sheep in the English countryside, and Sosa’s stackable Raawii ceramics represent a different way of thinking about design that opens up new creative horizons.
Hermès transforms an (indoor) pelota court into a world of its own
Bathed in golden half-light, five “houses” decorated with colored geometric designs rest on a bed of orange sand (a spectacular set designed by Charlotte Macaux Perelman and realized by a team of set designers working for La Scala). Inside this small village, we find objects and fabrics for a home of pure refinement. One for all: the Sillage armchair designed by Bijoy Jain from Studio Mumbai in wood clad with papier mâché, “tattooed” with fine lines like a tribal totem.
Marcin Rusak’s Neo–Art Nouveau
“While the world stopped, the dynamic process of research and creation was transformed into a slow and controlled process of growth, a thriving environment where endless possibilities open up,” Marcin Rusak says. The Polish artist is making his debut in Milan with the solo show “Unnatural Practice” curated by Federica Sala, where an almost Art Nouveau aesthetic—made of plant matter coated in metal or resin—rests on a scientific foundation. He brings to the Ordet exhibition space a great ecosystem in which the evolutionary process, though presented in its decay, opens up to new metamorphoses.
Toiletpaper Home: Irony is served
A narrow blue façade peeps out at No. 4 Via Balzaretti. Inside, on the three floors of the house-studio, unfolds the irreverent and colorful world of Seletti and Toiletpaper, who are unveiling their Home collection for the first time. An ode to maximalism, tables are shaped like bars of soap, animal prints, and even hens roaming the garden. To welcome us, Stefano Seletti says: “Here, you are not clients but guests at a lunch for a few close friends.” There is no shortage of ironical objects for the table during lunch on the terrace. The menu consists of frog burgers, “big insult” tiramisu, and rivers of coffee spritz. Needless to say, this is design week’s most eclectic banquet.
