Last week, the brightest and best from the design world, descended upon Milan for the world’s most important furniture fair, Salone del Mobile. Despite some grumblings that the event has become too commercial and doesn’t do enough for emerging talent, it is still regarded as the leading international furniture fair and attracts 330,000 people to the city each year.
From the exhibition spaces, majestic palazzos and luxury fashion exhibits, here is our pick of the best that the design world has to offer in 2015.
Tom Dixon
Tom Dixon’s new lights, Melt, look like molten lava or melting blown glass. When grouped together to form a cluster of lights they form a beautifully vivid display of copper, gold and chrome fabulousness.
Tom Dixon’s Wingback Chair is a British classic re-mastered in Kvadrat fabrics and hues. The stunning new collection includes chairs, dining chairs, ottomans and sofas.
Designer collaboration
One of the most exciting exhibits at the show was the collaboration between five famous architects and designers – Zaha Hadid, Ben van Berkel, Fernando Romero, Ross Lovegrove and Michael Young. The architects have joined forces to create pairs of women’s shoes for United Nude, made solely using 3D printers. Simply amazing!
Inflatable bonsai trees
For those who are not in possession of green thumbs, these inflatable bonsai trees are ideal. Part of the Tokyo Midtown Award Exhibition at Rossana Orlandi, these mini – and massive – inflatable bonsais perfectly marry together modern and traditional Japanese culture.
Caesarstone’s Movements Exhibition
Caesarstone took up residency at Palazzo Serbelloni during the event to host a groundbreaking exhibition; Movements, with Philippe Malouin. This show explored the unexpected applications of Caesarstone quartz surfaces. The first part of the exhibition featured twenty planters, each individually created to show the versatility of Caesarstone.
The second part of the exhibition featured some fantastic and much enjoyed indoor swings.
Dutch Invertuals
The curator Wendy Plomp started Dutch Invertuals, a twice-yearly exhibition of up-and-coming Dutch design talent, six years ago. This year’s edition was a striking display of fresh talent and focused on an elaborate theme of invisible technologies and body language, incorporating spinning iridescent bubbles, 3-D effect lamps.
Calico x BCXSY: Brooklyn-made walls, in Milan
At Rossana Orlandi, the Brooklyn wallpaper studio Calico debuted a new collaboration with the Amsterdam studio BCXSY, called Inverted Spaces, for which they used as source material Hubble Telescope photos downloaded from NASA’s free image bank. The metallic and pastel paper was also applied to BCXSY’s geometric tables and stools.
Karl Zahn
Salone also plays host, on alternating years, to the Euroluce lighting fair. This year, a standout was this new fixture in matte bronze by the Brooklyn designer Karl Zahn for Roll & Hill, which has a moody ’70s vibe.
Wallpaper* magazine’s handmade project
Last but not least is one of our favourites. Wallpaper magazine launched its Handmade project five years ago as an attempt to connect contemporary designers with unsung artisanal craftsmen and producers, and it’s since grown into something of a juggernaut. The quality of both the contributors and the pieces themselves has continued to grow, this year spawning tables by Formafantasma and Muller Van Severen, an elaborate candy dish by Kristina Dam, and contributions from bigwigs like Piero Lissoni and Patricia Urquiola.
We will now wait with baited breath to see what fantastical exhibits are on display in 2016.
