There's a yearning for poetry: some of the Fuorisalone installations and exhibitions at Design Week 2017 in Milan offer multisensory visions in which to find magic, emotion, enchantment and wonder.
Alongside the many sustainable or otherwise, useful and not-so-useful, innovative or already-seen projects and products that crowd the eyes and mind of the intense and bustling Design Week 2017 in Milan, there are some multisensory and poetic installations that are well worth seeing. They are small islands of magic where, for a few minutes, one immerses oneself in a special experience with a rarefied atmosphere, where sounds and images create evocative effects. If the success of a Milan design week event can be measured by the queue to get in, then this year the top spot is contested by Nendo's exhibition in the showroom of fashion brand Jill Sander, the installation by Cos, another well-known fashion brand, and the one by Panasonic at the Accademia di Brera. It is worth the wait, in any case, to see the best installations of the Fuorisalone 2017.
Nendo is one of the best-known Japanese architects and designers; he has his studio in Milan and works extensively with Italian design companies. His essential products and his exhibitions — such as Nendo, invisibles outlines, staged this year in the showroom of fashion designer Jill Sander — always have a powerful emotional impact. Minimalist and essential, he manages to communicate emotion and poetry through just a few absolute, almost abstract gestures. At via Beltrami 1, near Piazza Castello.
New spring/New spring is the black-and-white installation conceived by Studio Swine of London for Cos, in which the audience — with the wonder and joy of a child — becomes the protagonist by interacting with the large bubbles produced by an artificial tree. The bubbles do not burst but dissolve after a while in an impalpable, perfumed mist. At via Pietro Mascagni 8, near Piazza San Babila.
At the Accademia di Brera, technology meets craftsmanship in Panasonic's installation Electronics meets crafts. As in previous years, there is a grand audio-visual performance, spectacular in its scale, imagery, filming approach and sounds, which visitors access in small groups. The second part is the exhibition Go on, in the basement of the Accademia — this too with a surprise direction by Design Kyoto Kaden lab: here you will find a series of beautiful "products with soul", that is to say, objects with a soul. Extraordinary artefacts made by a group of Kyoto craftspeople who combine the highest quality of traditional Japanese manufacture with the most innovative technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2fY0hrPpF4
Luminous, experimental, innovative and minimalist objects pushed to the edge of abstraction feature in the equally rarefied and beautiful installation by Formafantasma — that is, the studio of designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin — at Spazio Krizia, which has reopened after a few years at via Manin 21.
In the beautiful and little-known grand hall of the Istituto dei ciechi at via Vivaio 10, there is WonderGlass, an exhibition in which the star is glass and the magic this material is capable of conjuring. Founded in 2013 by Maurizio and Christian Mussati, WonderGlass presents lights, installations and glass sculptures each year that connect artisanal expertise with design, and architecture with fashion. This year the Calliope installation is by designer Marcel Wanders, but there are also works by other distinguished names — from Zaha Hadid to John Pawson — that together form a collection of exceptional pieces. An opportunity to discover, too, a building that few people in Milan know.
