Milan mid April, the entire 'posse' of design is present that week to check out the latest trends and commercial hits to be at the Salone. We hardly visit the fair itself as there is so much to discover at the different 'area's in the city center.
We first hit the Zona Tortona, less inspiring than it used to be, but because of a few strong players still a must visit. (Imagine to have missed the Moooi exhibit with Erwin Olaf!!!-see previous post)
This is my (first) list of designers, objects, concepts that I found interesting, intriguing or spot on trend. I try to look for things that move me. It's a kind of radar that set's my intuition in action. It's like looking for some needles in a haystack as there are thousands of designers, all trying to show
what's in their mind.
The list part I.
I loved this installation by UK based designer Olivia Alice Clemence. She is what we call 'a designer, but also a maker and more specifically a scent designer.She showed in Milan her project ‘Grandmas Jumper’ where she designed a glass scent distilling unit, that she uses for a variety of scent based activities. Imagine a collection glass bottles, all with 100% pure transparent fluids, but labeled with most fascinating words: beer, coffee, peanuts, carpet, wood, Subway sandwiches… I asked to have a sniff and strangely enough all the bottles had the exact, strong smell of the product they were referring to. This was a project at the Southbank center, where she ran a workshop named, Sniff out the Southbank. From the stewed Thames water, classing with delicious freshly baked goods, with an undertone of damp, gritty concrete, using her distilling kit, she bottled the scent of the Southbank. Yep.
The Grandma's Jumper project is about nostalgia and not letting go. This project explores the life and death of a garment that is left behind when someone passes away. By extracting the essential elements that are embedded within the garment – such as scent, colour and DNA – the original form would become obsolete. By deconstructing the clothing and extracting its composite and essential elements, it keeps the associated memories without having to retain the physical object. Pure poetry if you may ask me.
Olivia sees her future in retail, where she knows that the importance of smell in evoking emotion and creating ambience becomes an essential part of shop environments and branding.
If you pop into her office or meet her during one of her projects, do smell her creations.
These carpets are based on organically grown fungus and mold, something that most people disgusts.
But look at the beauty of the patterns, the colors and the bizarre shapes. Great nature based inspiration, one of the big trends happening together with a growing interest and collaboration between artists and scientist.
This is work from Dutch artist Lizan Freijsen. The way natural processes leave a trace or a drawing in our daily life is her starting point. She has an enormous archive of molds, fungi and other bacteria based organisms.
More about Lizan:
http://www.lizanfreijsen.com/site/
http://www.38cc.nl/Lizan01.htm
Slow Seating, the second year this Beijing design group presents in Milan. A great logo, I know.
But the nicest thing about this exhibit is the fact that these Chinese based designers do not try to copy or join European designers in their design roots, but find strength in their own heritage, rituals and spiritual history.
This results in elegant, surprising but most of all beautiful objects and furniture with a clear Chinese, contemporary design statement.
Slow Seating is curated by designer Zhu Xiaojie.The Milan exhibition explores the relation between technology and craftsmanship through the icon of the chair. An invite to slow down and sit down, in order to think about the future of design.
Slow Seating showcases over 60 works by a variegated group of Chinese designers and reflects upon the significance of the chair as an object apt for meditation and rest.
"Slow Seating – Contemporary Chinese Design”
From “Made in China” to “Designed in China”
 |
| The symbol of the exhibition is a panda, with its back turned against the audience. The Chinese national animal, and a metaphor for calm and mildness, the panda has been chosen in the wish to recall a lost China, disappearing balances, and the necessity to slow down the hectic rhythms of our lives. The image’s tones have been inspired by traditional Chinese painting. |
Next storytelling design concept was an installation on 'Temporary spaces for entrepreneurship' by Vacant.nl.
White Whales present an ideal strategy for colonizing vacant buildings with minimal effort and materials.
Large container bags, primarily used for transporting raw materials in shipping containers, can be used to create temporary spaces in any location imaginable. These new flexible spaces can serve a wide variety of purposes, superimposing a new world over an existing one.
The Sandberg Institute has developed Vacant.nl, a two-year Master's degree, to encourage designers, creatives and scientists to develop fresh, innovative and realistic design strategies for the temporary use of vacant buildings and spaces. The program challenges students to take a hands-on approach to researching and exploring the potential of unused properties in the Netherlands.
See for yourself.
www.vacant.nl
In the same exhibition of Dutch designers I met Aliki Van Der Kruijs. She didn't bring a large installation or expensive design statements. She just hung two series of silk scarves on a wire and started telling her story about the rain.
Aliki creates prints on textiles developed through a technique called hydrography: the mapping of a body of water. This allows her to capture and visualize the depths and tides of water movement.
Aliki let's the rain make designs on her fresh painted tissues, mostly silk, and let this natural process do it's work.
One-of-scarves with beautiful colors-the ones where pantone color blocks were run trough by rain- and others-blue ones where you literally see raindrops on the tissue form patterns- pure poetry meets science (again) to create new nature inspired objects. Aliki is planing to develop curtains and other homestuff based on her experiments.
Silk scarves are for sale.
Hydrography by Aliki Van Der Kruijs: +31(0)6 141 801 10.
www.alikivanderkruijs.com
http://happywiththerain.tumblr.com
Lichterblauw is a project during the NIJVER|heden exhibition in ZuiderZeeMuseum, Enkhuizen, NL 26 may 2011 <> 31 oct 2011
Aliki presented an overview of the weather conditions during the 158 days of the artist in residency in the museum.
http://www.lichterblauw.alikivanderkruijs.com/#home
More posts on my Salone di Mobile impressions, not only when I feel like it, but when I find time....
Sorry guys, so busy with trend and strategic work, but I'll be back soon. Who needs sleep in this exiting times?
Kate
