Frame Editors' Picks at Milan Design Week 2018 - News - Frameweb

Frame editors’ picks at Milan Design Week 2018 - News - Frameweb 10/04/18, 16:19
Frame editors’ picks at Milan Design

Week 2018
April 09, 2018
Milan – Every year, Milan Design Week only seems to intensify and increase in
blast radius. An industry-wide cultural phenomenon, the programme of inspiring
and exciting exhibitions and events is only a few days away. From microliving
spaces to meaningful digital technology to industrialized sustainability efforts,
Frame breaks down the overwhelming-as-always list of names, brands and
locations to only the must-sees from 17 to 22 April 2018.
Typecasting – Vitra
Via Palermo 10
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Viennese-born and Paris-based curator and designer Robert Stadler draws on

Vitra’s archives for the Typecasting exhibition, comprising some 200 objects.
Showcasing current products, prototypes, rejects, special editions and future
visions, the exhibition examines the social function of furniture in today’s society.
Rejecting conventional furniture categorization, Stadler groups the objects outside
their functional context by regarding them as characters with personality traits and
behaviour patterns that reflect stereotypes in contemporary society. In addition to
the emergent new connections, narratives and interpretations of Vitra products and
furniture in general, a collective living space asks how societal evolution will
impact furniture design conventions. Designers including Konstantin Grcic,
Barber and Osgerby and Commonplace Studio as well as Stadler developed ideas
for the space, titled The Communal Sofa.
vitra.com
Microliving and Housing – Containerwerk x Friends

Via Tortona 31
Photo courtesy of Containerwerk
German start-up Containerwerk presents solutions to temporary housing issues

and the trend for urban microliving with living spaces compacted within shipping
containers. Part of the global movement advocating for tiny, sometimes quirky, but
always well-designed dwellings, the company presents two installations at Tortona
– one on Microliving, which encapsulates all residential features in a single
container – and the other on Temporary Housing, which invites visitors to
question the optimal usage of the existing set-up of spaces given the growing
fusion of professional and private life. While the first installation offers an eco-
friendly alternative to traditional building materials – often with the added feature
of mobility, the second touches upon the sharing economy and expands the
Library of Things movement to include spaces as well as objects.
containerwerk.com
Living Nature – Carlo Ratti Associati

Piazza del Duomo
Embodying the forward-looking objectives of the Salone’s 2018 manifesto, La

Natura dell’Abitare, or Living Nature stands proudly in front of the neoclassical
Palazzo Reale. The installation unites the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn
and winter in one 500-sq-m space, reversing the concept of a garden pavilion.
Created by design studio Carlo Ratti Associati, Living Nature seeks to unpack the
application of sustainable design and technology by offering the visitors a place to
contemplate human living and design in the context of nature and the
environment.
carloratti.com
Forms of Movement – Nendo

Via Tortona 27
At the renowned studio’s solo exhibition this year, ten Japanese makers explore
different ways of achieving movement through material and technology to bring
our connection and interaction with the objects around us into focus. How many
times have we unthinkingly sat on a chair, whether we actually wanted to sit or
not? A chair was there, so we sat: automatic movement. From Zippppper Project,
five zippers redesigning the familiar zipping motion and thereby their own
functionality; to Press Tiles which use the stepping movement as part of a manual
press production process; to Variations of Time, hourglasses that distort the linear
progression of time to match our own relative experience of it; the ten designers
ask us to pay attention to the way that our world of design objects can take
advantage of us without our conscious knowledge.
Created using delicate production technology, Variations of Time reinterprets

hourglasses to challenge a linear measurement of minutes and seconds.
nendo.jp
Lidewij Edelkoort and Tom Dixon Design Expert Talk – Liganova x

Edelkoort
Anteo Palazzo del Cinema
How does one experience intuition in design? To consider such elements as

aesthetics, functionality and the relationship with the body while being aware of
sustainability issues, emerging technologies, workers’ rights and a sense of
globalization vs localization et cetera, today’s designer and design thinker must
also be a researcher, translator, historian and futurist – meaning that
transdisciplinary knowledge is the means for reaching design intuition. Presented
by Liganova, trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort will engage in a talk with
designer Tom Dixon on 19 April from 14:15-15:00. Mediated by Frame’s founder
and director Robert Thiemann, the talk will consider the future of design in its
various forms.
Places are limited. Tickets can be purchased here.
liganova.com
Hidden Senses – Sony Design

Via Savona, 56/A
At Spazio Zegna in the Tortona area of Milan, Sony Design presents Hidden
Senses, a multisensorial exhibition of five case studies that reveal new perceptual
experiences. Building on the modern reality that the objects around us are no
longer inanimate, the exhibition shows how technology and design can create a
richer, more personal environment. As design and technological innovation
facilitates new interactions, the result is new sensorial experiences and emotional
responses.
sony.net
Mutant Matter – Dutch Invertuals x FranklinTill

Via Pastrengo 12
The creative mavericks at Dutch Invertuals show us – with more than a touch of
irony – how mankind’s products are returning to nature to become the ‘resources’
of tomorrow. It’s Dave Hakkens’s Precious Plastic installation on a macro scale:
according to the Dutch Invertuals and trend forecasting agency FranklinTill, we

have entered the era Anthropocene, a new geological age where plastics are
written into fossil record and human activity has corrupted the processes of nature
forever.
Exploring our current and future relationship with materials and making, the
Mutant Matter exhibition includes projects such as Onno Adriaanse’s table, which
combines organic and geometric forms to illustrate the physical reaction between
different materials, and Xandra van der Eijk’s work exploring the corrosion and
decay of manmade materials. There is also a programme of talks in conjunction
with the recent release of Radical Matter, a book by Kate Franklin and Caroline
Till of FranklinTill in which the authors propose a new model for making and
material thinking in a sustainable world.
Xandra van der Eijk’s work explores the geological corrosion and decay of
manmade materials. Photo Dutch Invertuals
dutchinvertuals.nl
franklintill.com
Open Sky – Cos x Philip K Smith III

Corso Monforte 35
Following the critical success and popularity of New Spring, last year’s Milan
Design Week installation in collaboration with Studio Swine, London-based
fashion brand Cos moves towards a more straightforward exhibition with
American artist Phillip K. Smith III. Open Sky is a site-specific installation of
mirrors that refer to the movement of clouds and sunlight, the beauty of the
surrounding architecture, and the 16th-century Palazzo Isimbardi courtyard and
garden.
Intervening on the interaction between architecture and nature, Open Sky is a

more subtle work than previous Cos installations – most recently, Loop, designed
by Snarkitecture, involved an interactive rollercoaster framework for marbles that
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turned the spheres into an architectural material – but is no less physically

engaging for that. As part of the large-scale installation, Smith also contributed a
series of smaller window displays at select Cos stores that adopt the reflection of
the streetscape in each location, from Tokyo to Stockholm to New York City.
pks3.com
cosstores.com/salone
Circular by Design – Really

Via Palermo 1
With designers such as Benjamin Hubert, Claesson Koivisto Rune and Jo

Nagasaka contributing to Really’s second Salone exhibition, Circular by Design
promises to explore the industry’s full range of opportunities to shift to a circular
economy of textiles. The exhibition focuses on the potential of Solid Textile Board
– which debuted last year with designs by Max Lamb and Christien Meindertsma
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in cotton and wool – when it comes to incorporating upcycled textiles into design
and architecture.
reallycph.com
kvadrat.dk
Paradigm – Fabrica x Pierre Frey

Via Ferrante Aporti 19
In Paradigm, fabric and form is distorted into three-dimensional installations that

represent human needs: basic physiological ones such as rest, hygiene, and food,
but also those higher on Maslow’s hierarchy such as self-expression,
contemplation and social gatherings. With fabric supplied by French company
Pierre Frey, Fabrica’s design team is guided by Sam Baron in the surrealistic
visualization of contemporary reality. Though abstract, the dreamlike installations
nevertheless resonate with the universal human condition through emergent
characteristics.
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fabrica.it
pierrefrey.com
The Flow of Time – Grand Seiko

Viale Alemagna 6
Japanese luxury watch brand Grand Seiko makes its grand debut at Milan Design
Week this year. The Flow of Time exhibition – with Hikaru Mori as spatial
designer – comprises two installations by two Tokyo-based design studios, Takt
Project and Shingo Abe. Inspired by Spring Drive, a Grand Seiko mechanism
characterized by its precision and longevity, the installations immerse visitors in
the movement of time. Abe’s Kizamu / Nagareru installation contrasts the natural
movement of the sun and stars (the ‘flowing’ of time) with the artificial
mechanism of clocks (the ‘ticking’ of time) and captures how Spring Drive returns
us to the gliding flow of time through the smooth movement of its second hand.
Takt Project on the other hand, deconstructs the physical parts of Spring Drive into
an art installation, ironically capturing holding the pieces immobile in acrylic as a
commentary on the transience of time.
grand-seiko.com
Bar Anne – Space Encounters | Nothing New – Lensvelt

Corso di Porta Ticinese, 95
Designed by the Frame Award-winning Space Encounters, Bar Anne is one-of-a-

kind Milan Design Week experience featuring an interior created through
collaboration between some of the biggest breakout talents from the Netherlands.
Conceptualized in honour of Anne van der Zwaag – owner-director of Object
Rotterdam, author, curator and ambassador of the Dutch design scene – Bar Anne
is adjacent to Lensvelt exhibition Nothing New. Curated by Maarten Spruyt,
Nothing New comprises Lensvelt tables and chairs that have been purchased
secondhand from online markets like Marktplaats and eBay to be liberated with
kinetic sculptures.
Visual artists Children of the Light create a spectacular installation for Bar Anne, a
radical hospitality and exhibition space that welcomes the curious, creative and
hungry of Milan Design Week.
The venue also plays host to the Frame Awards Milan on 18 April, where the most
innovative and inspiring trade-fair stands at Salone del Mobile will be celebrated
in an awards ceremony.
space-encounters.eu
lensvelt.nl
Soundscape – Motosuke Mandai and AGC Asahi Glass
Via Ferrante Aporti 13
Ventura Centrale returns this year with more ground-breaking exhibitions in its
underground vaults beneath the Milan Central Station. The nine design spectacles
include a high-tech auditory glass installation by architect Motosuke Mandai in
partnership with leading Japanese glass, chemical and high-tech material
manufacturer AGC Asahi Glass. Representing a musical blend of design,
technology and aesthetics, Soundscape immerses visitors in a new auditory
experience.
Soundscape is presented at Ventura Centrale by architect Motosuke Mandai in

collaboration with leading Japanese glass, chemical and high-tech material
manufacturer AGC Asahi Glass. Sound generating glass immerses visitors in a
new auditory experience that represents a musical blend of design, technology and
aesthetics.
venturaprojects.com
For live Milan Design Week updates follow #FrameinMilan on Instagram.

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Frame editors’ picks at Milan Design Week 2018 - News - Frameweb 10/04/18, 16:19

Frame editors’ picks at Milan Design

Viennese-born and Paris-based curator and designer Robert Stadler draws on

Microliving and Housing – Containerwerk x Friends

Photo courtesy of Containerwerk

German start-up Containerwerk presents solutions to temporary housing issues

Living Nature – Carlo Ratti Associati

Embodying the forward-looking objectives of the Salone’s 2018 manifesto, La

Forms of Movement – Nendo

Created using delicate production technology, Variations of Time reinterprets

Lidewij Edelkoort and Tom Dixon Design Expert Talk – Liganova x

How does one experience intuition in design? To consider such elements as

Places are limited. Tickets can be purchased here.

Hidden Senses – Sony Design

Mutant Matter – Dutch Invertuals x FranklinTill

according to the Dutch Invertuals and trend forecasting agency FranklinTill, we

Open Sky – Cos x Philip K Smith III

Intervening on the interaction between architecture and nature, Open Sky is a

turned the spheres into an architectural material – but is no less physically

Circular by Design – Really

With designers such as Benjamin Hubert, Claesson Koivisto Rune and Jo

Paradigm – Fabrica x Pierre Frey

In Paradigm, fabric and form is distorted into three-dimensional installations that

The Flow of Time – Grand Seiko

Bar Anne – Space Encounters | Nothing New – Lensvelt

Designed by the Frame Award-winning Space Encounters, Bar Anne is one-of-a-

Soundscape – Motosuke Mandai and AGC Asahi Glass

Via Ferrante Aporti 13

Soundscape is presented at Ventura Centrale by architect Motosuke Mandai in

For live Milan Design Week updates follow #FrameinMilan on Instagram.

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