The revolution in fair
Finally, after the pandemic events and the past edition exceptionally postponed to June, the Salone del Mobile in Milan is back from 18 to 23 April. The traditional placement of the Fair in April coexists with the innovations introduced this year of a cultural, functional and thematic nature. All illuminated (literally and metaphorically) by the Euroluce biennial.
Let's make the point in 3 points:
Transposition of the entire exhibition facility on the ground floor to ensure better accessibility for users;
The new face of Euroluce, which brings the focus back to the visitor thanks to the ring-shaped and totally smart route;
Program full of cultural events across multiple sectors and also of an experiential nature.
All this is the 61st edition of the Salone del mobile in Milan.
The pandemic has accelerated a latent but already underway process. In the midst of the pandemic in mid-2020, companies were looking for other ways to stay in touch with their market or buyers. What has been done, therefore, is to anticipate something that would have happened in perhaps 5-6 years.
EUROLUCE | The city of lights
PhotoCredits: Costellazioni, staging project
Creator and coordinator: Beppe Finessi
Theme: AURORE, a large square in pavilion 13 which hosts important meetings and debates with the professionals of our time, while it becomes a multimedia and sensory space when not used for conferences. It is an installation that involves all the senses, touching on themes involving light and natural phenomena.
The new layout of Euroluce aims to focus on the visitor, making it easier for him to visit the fair and leaving the pleasure of discovery rather than the effort of research: man's role thus becomes active and no longer passive, because walking, just like in a city full of narrow streets with shop windows and restaurant bars, the visitor is solicited in his curiosity and desire to know. This is a two-way process, because on the one hand it attracts all types of exhibitors, from the established to the lesser-known ones, while on the other hand leaving the visitor the pleasure of discovery.
The new perspective becomes not only commercial but also cultural, because along the way it is possible to find rest areas that act as exhibition areas, in such a way as to allow the user to pause the enormous flow of information, given by the hundreds of products seen, and then restart the tour with new ideas and inspirations.
Euroluce | © Lombardini22
It begins the revolution which is at the same time evolution:
The idea of an exhibition on a single level is implemented, designing a city within the fair with paths and streets that integrate and relate the exhibition spaces with the areas with more cultural and interdisciplinary contents.
A profound connection between architecture, light, art and science to essentially change the trade fair model known up to now.
Some exhibits not to be missed
HELENE BINET. Nature, Time and Architecture
PhotoCredits: © Helene Binet | The Walls of Suzhou Garden, China, photographs from 2017 – 2019
The work of one of the most prominent contemporary photographers, Hélène Binet, shown through an original selection of images that explore the relationship between natural light and architecture, nature and time, and provide a visual narration of works by some of the leading masters of architecture. The set-up was devised to provide an opportunity for pause and reflection whilst visiting the fair. The exterior of a double architectural volume is covered in brushed aluminium, while the interior is covered in sheets of midnight blue felt, to create a powerful contrast between “in” and “out.” The felt covering the interior walls will highlight the exhibited works, and create a muffled, silent acoustic environment designed to provide a moment of suspended time as compared with the frenetic, teeming exterior.
Pavilion 11
FIAT BULB. The Edison Syndrome
PhotoCredits: Kazuhiro Yamanaka As long as I am dreaming 2002
An exhibition that pays tribute to an object, the classic incandescent lightbulb, its intrinsic power bound up with its apparently simple, firmly embedded and therefore iconic and recognisable shape. A history of the contemporary lightbulb, through art and design, structured as a se-quence of lightbulbs that switch from their primary and pragmatic use into unsettling objects and small experimental installations, astonishing and paradoxical. Devised in a cyclical form and created from cool, industrial materials, far removed from any customary household function, the show revolves around the idea of the “seriality” of its subject, its apparent repetition as a form allied with its uniqueness as a work.
Pavilion 15
Dawns. The Lights of Tomorrow
Photo Credits: Nadja Schlenker
The night sky with its infinity of stars and the daytime sky with its sun provide the palette with which the design is experimenting. The research and works that have gone into this exhibition, a balance of technology and poetry, clearly evidence how the re-interpreted luminous objects light a pathway leading to the future. “Artificial stars” are all the luminous devices that the “astronomer-designers” are examining, coming up with objects that show luminous happenings, orbiting spheres, reflective surfaces, blinding eclipses, coloured dawns, celestial hues. The exhibition is configured around the presence (or absence) of light, and its ability to change the perception of space. A fragmented floor plan maps out an internal path across spaces characterised by different luminous atmospheres – darkness, semi-darkness, pure light and vice versa – exalting the essence of the works on show.
Pavilion 9
Interior Night. Bright Artifacts
Photo Credits: https://www.salonemilano.it/it/sessione/interno-notte-artifici-luminosi
An exhibition of architectural images of interiors in which artificial light is the protagonist. A show populated with figures, accents, glows, constellations, rhythms, points, vectors and the occasional “capriccio” of light in which a lightbulb or light source can be made out, creatively inhabiting and transforming the space in a special way.
Pavilion 15
24°SaloneSatellite
The appointment dedicated to designers under 35, founded by Marva Griffin in 1998, sees over 550 hosted in the pavilions of Euroluce (pav. 13-15).
This year's theme is:
“Design Schools – Universities / BUILDING THE (IM)POSSIBLE.
Process, Progress, Practice”.
By placing design schools and universities in the spotlight, the SaloneSatellite aims to "underline the indelible contribution they have made and continue to make to the training of new designers and the development of design".
For this reason, the arrangement of the exhibition spaces has also been renewed, placing the 27 participating schools and universities in a perimeter ring that embraces the individual designers.
The primer of the Salone del Mobile
The communication campaign, entrusted to Leftloft and Gio Pastori, instead sees a new alphabet of design, colourful, geometric, ultra-pop: it consists of twenty-six very colorful Posters, one for each letter of the alphabet, accompanied by furniture with archetypal shapes , to narrate the Salone and the objects around which the international design system has developed.
Credits:https://www.salonemilano.it/it