Highlights From Fuorisalone At Milan Design Week 2024

Milan Design Week (April 15 to 21) stands out on the cultural calendar for its unparalleled global impact. At the primary fair, Salone del Mobile, leading global brands present their newest collections, serving as a pivotal platform for observing trends and innovations. Yet it is often at the more conceptual exhibitions at Fuorisalone where grander ideas take shape. It is here where design, architecture, art and more intersect, and where you witness the cross-fertilization of ideas. And it’s at Fuorisalone where you can pick up discourses on design thinking, which for 2024 was imagined to the theme “Materia Natura.”

For the week, Milan simply buzzed with design activity—the vibrant districts of Brera, Tortona and beyond hosting pop-up installations and exhibits, talks and discussions, and with parties flowing into the night. Brands put out their very best show, but mainly Milan Design Week is about the sharing of ideas, and speculating how design can help better shape our lives.

And let’s face it, no other city can quite stage a design fair like Millan where design and style, the pleasure in the art of living, are embedded into its very fabric. Here, among the brutalist buildings and crumbling palazzos, cobbled lanes and gorgeous green courtyards, is where tradition and modernity blend so effortlessly, and where a dedication to design excellence makes it one of the global leaders in the field.

So what were the 2024 discussions? If I were to narrow it down, concepts floating around could be roughly grouped into three main themes: balancing high and low tech, environmental care, and a touch of magic.

Back to the future

In Hideki Yoshimoto’s Beyond the Horizon, the ancient past meets the future. Commissioned by Lexus, for Milan the designer created a theatrical installation where polished floor mirrors simulated a serene water vista, a model of the LF-ZC (Lexus Future Zero-emission Catalyst) concept car was positioned at the center, while a row of towering sculptures lined the edge of the installation, all set against a large screen with the horizon’s evolving panoramas.

The installation came to life in a theatrical ten-minute sequence as the screen went from sunrise to sunset, and the washi paper inside the sculptures dynamically lit, each performing a unique dance to a bespoke soundtrack by the Japanese musician Keiichiro Shibuya. Yoshimoto’s work is concerned with humanizing technology. In Beyond the Horizon the identical sculptures symbolized the “hardware” in the car interface, while the thousand-plus year-old Echizen washi paper suggested the “software” element which would ever-evolve to offer unique in-car experiences tailored to the individual.

Elsewhere designers continued delving into the potentials of artificial intelligence in design and production. Philippe Starck, for instance, showed furniture made in partnership with AI. Working with the Italian furniture maker Kartell, his A.I Lounge and A.I Console use recycled plastic for an interesting dialogue on materials and production.

Nature calls

Within the historic walls of Teatro Gerolamo, design studio Formafantasma challenged us to look beyond mere aesthetics in design by turning the gaze to ethical modes of production. The installation Earthic Lab, for manufacturer of sustainable surfaces in design and architecture, Cosentino, turned waste into luxury by utilizing debris from the company’s production processes and cooking oil in the resin, while the white fragments on the surfaces, the aesthetic parts, were composed of recycled glass and plastic. Meanwhile the color palette of restrained greys and dark green was chosen for it requires less resin than lighter and brighter shades.

“We see this as the future of surface design,” founders, Italian designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, told me. “It’s not about luxury; it’s about the world we live in. We can no longer only look at aesthetics but need to understand the importance of how things are made.”

Meanwhile, at Lampo Milano, furniture maker VANK explored the synergy between nature and creativity as a way of rethinking a more sustainable creative approach to design. The Is One Life Enough? installation drew parallels between the energy in bio-design and solar energy and plant growth through photosynthesis.

Elsewhere, Dutch solar designer Marjan van Aubel proposed a future where solar energy is holistically embedded in the design process, rather than an afterthought add-on. Working with Lexus, her 8 Minutes and 20 Seconds installation took a life-size model of LF-ZC electric concept car, sliced into 11 transparent sheets, while energy was sourced from solar power captured by organic photovoltaic cells and stored in built-in batteries. The car’s color changed as the sun charged the battery, all to the natural sounds of rustling bamboo and the sun, based on sounds collected by Nasa.

The project title refers to the time it takes for a light particle from the sun to reach the earth. “The aim of my work is to change the perception of solar energy,” she said. “My hope is that you will see solar with a new perspective.”

Magical realism

Milan saw some wonderfully whimsical designs too, for a moment’s smile among the otherwise more serious discussions on machine intelligence and climate emergency. Philippe Starck’s What? at the Triennale di Milano (until June 16, 2024) is an immersive site-specific video installation that takes you into the creative mind of the brilliant Italian architect Alessandro Mendini. The French designer said of the work, “it is a sensorial and sentimental plunge into the extraordinary universe of bizarreness, creative fantasy, and wit,” which pretty much sums it up.

There were more subtle surrealist moments elsewhere with materials, color and shape playing tricks with the mind. Californian designer Yves Béhar’s Peaks for furniture brand MOOOI, for instance, is a modular sofa composed of dual triangles interconnected by fabric hinges, which allows them to rotate up or down to create multiple seating arrangements. While Faye Toogood created an intriguing space for Tacchini at Rude Arts Club with her irregular and elliptical shapes, sculptural elements mixed with delicate softness, which blended the British designer’s quirky spirit with fine Italian craftsmanship.

A favourite installation, and one that offered the perfect sanctuary from the lively city, was to be had at Emotions of the Sun by champagne house Veuve Clicquot—an enchanting space transporting the viewer on a sensory journey of textures and tones. A collaborative project with Magnum’s Steve McCurry, the exhibit featured artwork by a collective of photographers—Alex Webb, Newsha Tavakolian Trent Parke, Olivia Arthur, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Cristina de Middel, Nanna Heitmann—selected for the way they capture the many shades of the human condition. Unexpectedly, the images suspended in silky and translucent materials to evoke the sun’s universal appeal as well as tease us to read these images in unexpected ways.

In complete contrast, Samuel Ross’s Terminal 02 captured the imagination for its ginormous scale as well as turning the surrealist lens on the humble toilet. Working with bathroom brand Kohler, the cutting-edge London artist and designer constructed a maze-like brutalist installation at Palazzo del Senato featuring a giant orange lavatory and twisting industrial pipes to mark the launch of his first product, Formation 02.

Made in limited numbers, the smart toilet is rendered in bright orange, and boasts an asymmetric shape that recalls edgy brutalist architecture. The shell surrounding its porcelain bowl is constructed with composite resin, with unexpected cut-outs and textured evoking natural rock for an inspired fusion of functional, and playful and with an eye on the environment.

It feels somewhat fitting to summarize Milan Design Week with a quote from Piero Fornasetti, the late Italian artist and designer and purveyor of imagination, who once said: “Salvation is in the imagination. If I were a government minister, I would set up a hundred schools of imagination in Italy.”

Salone del Mobile and Fuorisalone ran from April 15 to 21, 2024, at Rho Fiera fairground and across Milan, Italy. Read my interview with Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, founders of Formafantasma here.