The Salone del Mobile, the world’s leading furniture and interior décor fair held from 17th–23rd April at Milan’s RHO fairground, attracted overall 307,418 visitors from 181 countries across the globe. Jörg Zutter reports
The stakeholders, organisers, exhibitors, visitors and industry experts unanimously agree: the 2023 fair will be celebrated as an enormous success (with a 15% increase in visitors on last year’s edition). The fringe fair FuoriSalone, a parallel event presented during Milan Design Week, focusing on alternative and more avantgarde design positions was also a triumph: its talking point was Interni Design Re-Evolution including architects like Odile Decq, Piero Lissoni and Stefano Boeri and a group of emerging young artists, as well as its shows attracting about 200,000 guests at the University of Milan, the Brera Botanical Garden, the iconic Torre Velasca (two minutes from the Duomo and fashion boutiques of La Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II).
This year’s Salone featuring more than 2,000 exhibiting brands (two-thirds from Italy and others from 37 different countries) was therefore a major cultural and economic event of great national and international importance. The famous Milan Fashion Week in February attracts equal excitement, but rather appeals to its own, perhaps more sophisticated cultural clientele.
Signals
In reviewing the Salone, one gains the impression of a nation re-energised by its past anchored in design, architecture and crafts since the High Renaissance and sending out corresponding signals to the global world. There are many stunning design solutions which have materialised in the numerous furnishings and interior fittings: either reflected in stylish and comfortable living or working areas, relaxing indoor or outdoor lounges, business lobbies etc.
It was also reassuring to see a wide range of sensible topics being addressed: from straightforward targeting of sustainable issues in the use of natural materials, to promoting our essential demand for and right to a personal living space as well as our need to surround ourselves with natural and gentle hues or inspiring and vivid colours as well as furniture manufactured from natural instead of synthetic materials, – all elements which have an impact on our mood and well-being.
The first pavilion to visit was a dark black box curated by the brand Turri (1). The displayed furniture, including many elegant sofas etc., all arranged in spacious settings, often marked by marble-effect walls and united by a fascinating woven seagrass cloud or, to be more precise, an endless horizontal, uninterrupted undulating banner floating down from the ceiling in all parts of the booth, complemented by sophisticated lighting consisting of small white luminaries, hence clearly indicating both the design cohesion and the visitors’ itinerary in the 1,000-square metre-plus pavilion.
Poliform’s approach was different. In creating a kind of central circular entrance space or assembly hall in what – by size and concentration – was doubtless one of the fair’s biggest spaces, the brand attested its ambition to celebrate the “timeless elegance” of its famous collections, as became evident in the Brera sofa, designed by Jean-Marie Massaud, with an inspiring variable system of either linear, L-shaped or curved form-elements.
A worthy competitor to Poliform is certainly Flexform, a long-standing name founded in 1959 and a participant since the first Salone in 1961. The brand has developed a large home furnishings collection. Its focus however is the Asolo sofa designed by Antonio Citterio, which is the company’s undisputed flagship, well known for its tactile comfort, discrete visual appearance and not least the manufactured materials which follow a sublime “Morandi palette”. All in all, Flexform’s design prioritises elegance rather than luxury and, as a consequence, is never perceived as ostentatious, so providing the ideal environment to host an art collection of modern or contemporary art.
Elegant
Among the many design studios that stood out was Marelli. The brand is relying on a vast array of abundant materials, one of the hallmarks of its craftsmanship-design. The Noah collection, designed by architect Luca Erba, includes some extremely elegant couches and armchairs endowed with exceptional volumes and curved forms and thus blends in with a modern lifestyle (2).
Awesome are also the versatile sofas and seats of the Peonia line, designed for Pianca by Cristina Celestino, since they present themselves like a flowers, or in other words, like a blooming peonies in spring (3). A contrast is the new collection by Meridiani, a brand belonging to the group IDM (Italian Design Brand) and being its biggest affiliate, with a completely different design philosophy. The emphasised simplicity and elegance of the product line – often designed in rounded or linear shapes as additions to the company’s more classical furnishing line – indeed has the stunning quality to give the interior a particular ambiance. The brand’s bespoke sofas range in price from €30,000 to more than €50,000. Design brands joining a larger financial conglomerate follows the trend in the luxury market.
Another business entity of IDB is Gervasoni, whose presence at the Salone received great interest mainly for two reasons: firstly, for the nifty design of the exhibition pavilion, enclosed by a translucent wall, respectively rows of vertical helical felt bands – reflecting a kind of a Mediterranean brise soleil – encouraging a poetic dialogue with the surroundings and thus creating an ideal context for the display of the brand’s indoor as well as outdoor furniture. An extra attraction was the new line of the Ghost sofa consisting of modular elements of various rectangular shapes of different sizes, inspired by the building block system, and enabling numerous playful combinations and inviting new seating patterns.
Solutions
Among the defiant design brands was edra (derived from the Greek and meaning a spot for philosophical discussions). Especially the two sofa designs by Francesco Binfaré humorously challenge traditional views of how a sofa must look and be used. The first model On the Rocks consists of two elements: a white, rectangular seating area superimposed with a curved or snake-like bolster serving as backrest (4). The second example titled Pack includes a rectangular white base (symbolising an ice block) but hosts an elongated bolster in the shape of a stylised polar bear (5). The disco-like blue lighting of the presentation further enhanced the contemporary sculptural appeal of these new design creations.
Other brands put forward less of a Neo-Baroque design stance than a purely conceptual philosophy and sophisticated lifestyle of how to approach and occupy space with delicate furnishing structures as, for example, Maxalto: a brand which has transformed the legendary white cube (today’s revered way of exhibiting contemporary art) into a space illuminated by LED panels and displaying a small selection of minimalist furniture, which however was fenced off (6). Thus, it created the feeling of being in a museum – inaccessible for the visitor and a kind of contradiction with the idea of a design fair.
A brand strongly prioritising ease of living or relaxing comfort is Valentini whose stylish design concept subtly takes possession of the living environment,as evidenced by the elegantly curved and elongated – almost panoramic – sofa Stone (7). Valentini’s shrewd design concept is indeed a world away from the frowned upon boutique style. A stylish and multi-use proposal for furnishing the living room with a wall unit or a bookcase system was provided by Sangiacomo, and not to mention plenty of attractive solutions for walk-in closets, assembling elegant LED-lit wardrobes often with transparent doors or, in terms of volume, gigantic cabinets with sophisticated sliding doors that discretely fit into the space and add creative value to the private domain.
Daring
Time and again the curious visitor incidentally discovered new and daring design solutions, among them, the most extreme proposals showcased in the booth of Glas Italia, offering a series of intriguing glass wardrobes, like the storage furniture Commodore by Piero Lissoni or the Prism Glass Wardrobe by Tokujin Yoshioka (8, 9).
Stunning, by contrast, were the sculpture-like marble furniture objects – table, chair and curtain – presented at Margraf’s stand, which also made evident in a very focused way how marble (in the specific case, marble from the Italian Dolomites) still is a very attractive material for designers and architects. It is artistically versatile for adaption well beyond its traditional bathroom or kitchen contexts (10).
Stunning too is the brand Citco since it uses the traditional and ages-old material marble in a new and often very fluid way as became evident in a selection remarkable furniture solutions (11). More experimental design could be experienced at the SaloneSatellite, a special section for young emerging designers.
The French company Roche Bobois, often working closely with renowned designers, presented a colourful new design line of outdoor furnishing, conceived by the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos. The rainbow coloured and kidney-shaped sofas and their adjacent matching environment ingeniously replicate a theme park ambiance (12).
Finally, a real commitment to the contemporary outdoor design trend was proposed by the brand Nardi, which thanks to its consistent furnishing line (displayed in a 400-square metre garden-like pavilion) elegantly embraced the natural environment and inspired a carefree indulgence in leisure with a collection suitable both for rooftop or balcony settings, and even more for overgrown gardens providing shaded areas during superheated seasons.
Insights
A large section of the Salone was dedicated to the contemporary illuminating systems which nowadays are dominated by a large variety of LED lighting systems – a few of them had already been integrated in several pavilions – which occasionally appeared vertiginous or rather very technical and thus literally shunning the human living environment. However, some brands presented within the section Euroluce, among them Artemide as well as Vivida or Leucos (all enterprises that can build on a long-established reputation in lighting systems) came up with various innovative and convincing ideas.
Admittedly, the ultimate choice of suitable lighting systems depends either on the chosen furnishing style and, of course, on each user’s own taste. It is a personal decision whether to opt for a cool LED-lighting system, or in stark contrast, for a magnificent multi-coloured Murano chandelier: on show at the fair were sumptuous examples by arte di Murano (13, 14), iDOGI (15) and Barovier&Toso.
The tour of this year’s extensive Salone del Mobile and the many discussions with designers and connoisseurs present at the different stands made clear the resilience, continuity, quality and the enduring innovation capacity in the first place of Italian furniture and interior design and confirmed its stellar international rating.
A closing thought – certainly bearing in mind our latest TEFAF Maastricht review – for unashamed lovers of high-quality design: the Milan Salone is certainly the first place to go and to experience all the inspiration to fully furnish a personal apartment or mansion to the highest design standard. However, to equip a tasteful living environment with art works, in other words to build a private art collection, the viewer must still take another step and go to explore and visit many commercial or public art galleries, frequent the main international art fairs like the different editions of Art Basel or Frise, and not least TEFAF in Maastricht or New York, which ideally unites a distinguished selection of all forms of old, modern and contemporary art.
Jörg Zutter
(Text by Jörg Zutter, images by Jörg Zutter/image 2 courtesy of Marelli)
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