The Dezeen team are reporting live from Milan Design Week (15-19 April). Read on for all the coverage from the fourth day (Thursday 18 April) – and follow the live feed for today’s activity!
5:30pm Dezeen co-ceo Ben Hobson reports from a talk that has just taken place in the middle of Dutch brand Moooi’s Living Room exhibition at Salone Dei Tessuti.
Dezeen’s editorial director Max Fraser spoke to Yves Behar, Lidewij Edelkoort and Marcel Wanders about how lighting, scent and surfaces can combine to create richer interior environments.
This is Dezeen’s last talk of Milan design week, which means that you’ll be much more likely to see Max – who has been moderating all week – out at Bar Basso tonight! Saluti!
5:15pm Luggage brand Rimowa has collaborated with coffee maker La Marzocco on the Linea Mini espresso machine.
To launch the collaboration they have been hosting the Caffe Rimowa all week during Milan design week.
As day four begins to wind up before this evening’s festivities, we’ll need all the caffeine we can get to make it through – happy for it also to be in the form of espresso martinis.
The Linea Mini is made in La Marzocco’s factory in Florence and the signature Rimowa grooved panels that can be found on their luggage and clad the coffee machine were made in Rimowa’s Cologne factory, before the two are assembled by hand.
4:45pm Spotted at Spazio Maiocchi: Sabine Marcelis’s first-ever chair design, created for Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum.
And check out Dezeen’s TikTok of Sabine’s installation with Paul Cournet called Design Space AlUla (see 3:15pm entry from day two).
4:30pm Francis Kéré spoke to Dezeen’s Starr Charles (see 4pm entry from day two) about his circular pavilion made from spruce logs designed for Germany kitchen brand Next125 at Milan design week.
“If you think about [a cave], you relate to the light from outside to little openings,” Kéré said.
“This is what brought us to think about using these logs and let gaps in between so that light can come through. That was [going to] create a warm place; a welcoming place.”
Read the full article now ›
4:00pm Dezeen’s Jane Englefield is still in Milan’s Isola district, where designers from the MENA region are showing at the Routes to Roots exhibition.
A handful of the designers took cues from various local architecture and materials when creating their pieces.
Saudi Arabian practitioners Abdulqader ALsuwaidan, Hayat Almousa, Lama Dardas and Nawaf Alghamdi collaborated to create a mini, folded aluminium “pavilion” as “a contemporary interpretation of Islamic architecture”.
Manahel Al Qassem, also from Saudi Arabia, designed handbags informed by the country’s architectural forms using a “zero waste biomaterial”.
Egyptian collective Shell Homage created disc-shaped lighting out of biogradable materials made from egg and nut shells.
3:30pm Around the Table is an installation by Spanish design studio Masquespacio, writes Dezeen and interiors reporter Jane Englefield.
Curated for Isola Studio, the table setting and tableware pieces were designed to transform the venue into a private space for dinner experiences at night.
3:00pm British studio Foster + Partners has unveiled its latest chair design for German furniture brand Walter Knoll, the seventh in their ongoing collaboration.
The chair’s front legs, arms and supportive upper backrest are made from solid steam bent dowels.
The molded plywood seat rests on timber cross rails, gently curving over the top of the backrest and downwards towards the floor.
Called Osuu, the streamlined which chair features removable leather seat covers, was showcased in Walter Knoll’s spacious Brera showroom – Cajsa Carlson
2:45pm At the Issey Miyake store, innovative usage of everyday object animates an installation, called Fold and Crease, by the Dutch art collective We Make Carpets.
Dezeen’s Clara Finnigan reports from the store, where coloured wooden skewers and pins stuck into foam sheets give the impression of cascading, crafted “blankets”.
Find out more about Fold and Crease on Dezeen Events Guide ›
2:30pm Georgian studio Rooms Studio has created a series of six sculptural beds for an exhibition at Italian arts school SIAM on Via Santa Marta, in the 5vie district.
One of the beds includes a metallic mattress and has exhaust pipes on the bottom, perfect for getting a few Z’s while going at the fast pace of Milan design week – Ben Dreith
2:00pm Dezeen’s social editor Clara Finnigan has been to see skincare brand Aesop’s first partnership with Salone del Mobile.
They are hosting four activations across the city. At the Piazza Cordusio, the space is clad in tiles made from soap.
1:30pm We have rounded up a selection of key installations from Milan design week (see below).
One of the twelve is the installation at Salone del Mobile designed by film director David Lynch (see 2:45pm entry from day two), which you can now read the full report about by Cajsa Carlson, featuring all the photos.
1:15pm Play a game of chair or dog with us from Baranzate Ateliers!
Besides the chainmail (see 11:15am entry below), 7,000 square metres of collectible design is on display at the second edition of Baranzate Ateliers presented by Zaventem Ateliers.
Belgian-based Zaventem Ateliers showcases work from “industrial wastelands” in European cities.
Founded in 2019 at an ex-industrial warehouse in the village of Zaventem, near Brussels, Zaventem Ateliers is now home to 21 emerging and established creators “united by their passion for producing and processing materials.
12:30pm Dry ice, smoke machines, steam – all three have been notably deployed across Milan design week installations to add atmosphere and, arguably, to help soften the edges of newly fabricated installs that can otherwise land in ancient Milanese courtyards with stark contrast.
Inherently hard to capture on film, the Dezeen team have seen steam rising from around Samuel Ross’s toilet for Kohler, smoke machines concealing and revealing the Lasvit installation, and in traditional MAD Architects fashion, billowing clouds of smoke animate their Amazing Walk installation with Amazon.
Showing for the seventh time in Milan, MAD’s huge Amazing Walk installation has taken over the Cortile della Farmacia courtyard of the University of Milan for the week.
11:30am At the Acquasanta installation by AATC and Co, part of the Design Variations exhibition at Milan design week, brands showed limited-edition collectible designs made from “200-million-years-old” marble from the historic Breccia Medicea dell’Acquasanta quarry.
AATC and Co art director Umberto Gabriele told Dezeen’s deputy editor Cajsa Carlson that the brand gave designers a three-part brief: to use a very old material but give it a contemporary vision, to create designs that showcase the multiple layers of the stone, and to think of sustainability by using specific cuts of stone that might otherwise have gone to waste.
Among the pieces was design studio Etamorph’s curvy pink stool, which showcases the stratification of the marble in the mountain.
“It tries to interpret the layers in a way that explores it with geometry, the curves and layers of stone, because this is very sexy,” Etamorph design director Enrico Tognoni told Dezeen.
“This stone might be two million years old – because the entire quarry is 200 million old – it gives us an idea of how small we are.”
11:15am Collectible design showcase Baranzate Ateliers came fully armed this year, with Mexican studio Panorammma and Belgian designers Chanel Kapitanj and Niels Raoul Boone all showing chainmail seating.
10:30am At Super Club in Tortona last night, Dezeen co-hosted an America night party with North American design platform ICFF and others. Dezeen co-ceo Wai Shin Li and US editor Ben Dreith were both in attendance.
10:00am Dezeen’s Jennifer Hahn has also been to see DesignSingapore Council’s return to Milan design week with Future Impact 2, an exhibition looking at material innovation “to create a more sustainable future”.
From designer Gabriel Tan, lamps with 3D-printed skeletons feature shades hand-woven from translucent fishing line, which showcase how tech and craft can collaborate – rather than one supplanting the other.
A mono material chair by David Lee – made from a single sheet of aluminium so it can be easily recycled once the water-based paint is stripped away – was informed by the shape of the PlayStation logo.
Genevieve Ang and Interactive Materials Lab exhibited heat-transmitting ceramics.
Elsewhere, a stool by Christian+Jade was made with a seat of natural rubber derived from the Rubber tree, and a base made of wood from the same tree, which is normally incinerated once the tree no longer produces rubber.
9:00am Good morning! Kicking off day four at Milan design week with one of the Dezeen team’s favourite projects so far.
The École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) is exhibiting cellulose-sponge furniture designed by product design master’s students, to be shipped in the form of flat sheets and expanded at home by wetting them in the shower.
The show at Spazio Orso 16, which is titled UPS – Under Pressure Solutions, is an experimental research project led by five industrial designers teaching at ECAL.
The biodegradable material can expand to up to ten times its size and, once dried, can hold even heavy loads – as kindly demonstrated by ECAL graduate Maxwell Ashford.
To keep you up to date, follow the live coverage from. You can catch up on everything that happened on day one and day two and day three at Milan design week.
Dezeen Events Guide has created a Milan design week digital guide highlighting the key events at the festival.
See Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest information you need to know to attend the event, as well as a list of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.
All times are London time.
The lead image is by Jane Englefield.
