Fuorisalone 2022: Reflections on Space and Time
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Fuorisalone 2022: Reflections on Space and Time

A preview of this year’s show: design providing creative solutions for the challenges of the future

Fuorisalone 2022: Reflections on Space and Time
By Editorial Staff -

Milan is again about to become the epicenter of international design and a platform for artists, designers, and students. Scheduled for June 6–12, Fuorisalone is part of Milan Design Week, together with the Salone del Mobile furniture exhibition. The theme for this year’s Fuorisalone is Space and Time. The organizers have now laid the groundwork for an event that will examine the changes happening now around the world and the adaptations needed to achieve sustainability and to future-proof the designs of today. Since space and time are interconnected dimensions that reflect our impact on the planet, they need to be increasingly taken into consideration when planning the world of tomorrow. Design has an important role to play here as an instigator of creative, innovative, sustainable, and environmentally aware responses to the objectives set by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and by climate summits around the world. These values will be reflected in many of the events to be held as part of Fuorisalone but will also be the connecting thread between different installations.

 

“The designer’s role is to help us understand the complexity of reality,” says Paolo Casati, art director and co-founder of Studiolabo, promoter of the Milano Design Network project. “They do this by designing tools to assist communities and by imagining relationships between physical and virtual space, all while following the logic of sustainable circular design seen in terms of today’s most pressing issues.”

 

>>> Read more about the 2022 Salone del Mobile.

Parole chiave, Fuorisalone 2022 Courtesy of Fuorisalone

The organizers have chosen ten keywords to communicate the key issues being addressed by the upcoming exhibition. The first nine are quality, fragility, culture, technique, exploration, sharing, care, protection, and experience. The tenth word is urgency – the urgency to address situations that require immediate action.

The installation created for the Brera Design District by Italian architecture and multimedia firm Stark focuses on all this. Located at the Civic Aquarium of Milan, the work is called Momentum. It’s a visual and experiential space that encourages viewers to question the relationship between clock time and psychological time. The motivation for the installation grew out of the two years of the pandemic, and the altered perceptions of space and time it brought with it, with the two dilating and overlapping to the point that we sometimes lost track of our normal points of reference.

 

“By immersing yourself in this work,” reads the installation description, “you will enter a shared experience created by light and sound, in which you will be able step between clock time, and its inexorable passage, and psychological time, which can be acted upon. A chaotic scenario, in which you perceive the consequences of your every action, and in which movements are amplified and exaggerated, is juxtaposed with a regular scenario, in which drops of light are repeated an indefinite number of times, and every moment is separate from the one before it and after it. In the way they progressively multiply, the drops represent clock time – the version of time that we cannot alter. The work therefore invites you to reflect on your actions, which, because they take place in space, transform space. It’s always still possible to create, despite the inexorable passage of time.”

 

The installation, created within the Civic Aquarium in Milan’s Brera district, is also part of Ocean Week, an event intended to increase public awareness of issues related to the blue economy, and how we can protect our seas and oceans.

 

What’s new at Fuorisalone 2022

Tortona Rocks, Distretto Tortona Courtesy of Fuorisalone

One of the new highlights in 2022 is the Fuorisalone Award, a prize for the most significant content and installations at the event. Two prizes will be awarded: one by online public vote (via Fuorisalone.it), for the best installation, and the other by a jury for the most relevant and innovative content for the planning and design sector.

Inspire is a new section of the event website for discovering the projects and innovations on show at Fuorisalone. Through images and fact sheets, it offers a deeper insight into the highlights of the exhibition.

“It’s part of Fuorisalone.it’s DNA to come up with new ways to make digital content more accessible,” says Cristian Confalonieri, the other co-founder of Studiolabo. “This has led to the development of the Fuorisalone Award, Inspire, and the reserved areas of the website, all of which are new, user-centric ways to navigate content.”

 

Places, projects, events

Tortona Design Week, Distretto Tortona Courtesy of Fuorisalone

With 160 events and 165 showrooms, Milan’s Brera district will be the nerve center of Fuorisalone. But the event will also take in the Tortona, Durini, 5vie, and Isola districts, where the focus will be on sustainability, lifestyle, the co-construction of collective visions, and messages of peace, union, and collaboration.

The Tortona district will feature Tortona Rocks, BASE, Superstudio, and Tortona Design Week. The theme of sustainability will run through all the events, with the aim of interpreting current changes in society and anticipating needs.

The main theme of Tortona Design Week will be Fluidity and Design, two keywords that sum up the path that leading companies in the sector are taking for the restart. Tortona Design Week is a platform that attracts many emerging artists but also sees the participation of established designers from all over the world. The participating companies include Timberland, IKEA, Lexus, Mauro Saviola Group, Apima, Delta Light, Candy, Hoover, Haier, gloTM, Decor Lab, Capital Collection, Lechler – ColorDesign®, Mia Forniture, Zip Zone, Materioteca®, and Officina 14.

Milano Durini Design showcases new products and exclusive lifestyle options for both the trade and design lovers. The event is now also focused on highlighting the importance of the participating showrooms to make the district more attractive both now and throughout the year and, therefore, encouraging participation and involvement.

5VIE Design Week, an annual event dedicated to cross-disciplinary design practices, collectibles, and unique pieces, is back for the ninth time. This year’s event has been built around the co-construction of meaning and collective visions for the design of a shared future as a message of peace and collaboration, all under the banner of creativity.

Isola Design District has announced the sixth Isola Design Festival. Reflecting the theme of Together as One, Isola will be welcoming over 250 international designers and design studios, alongside the local galleries and artisans, whose work will be showcased in over 30 locations in one of the most vibrant parts of Milan.

Febal tram, Fuorisalone 2022 Courtesy of Fuorisalone

There’ll be events happening throughout all these districts as well as spilling over into others. The biggest of these is Base, which will see designers, schools, universities, and students from around the world coming together for an experimental laboratory of imagination and inclusion, in which design will become a lens for interpreting negative tendencies on our planet, and then proposing positive new visions and ideals for daily living.

Among a string of highlights, it’s worth mentioning Casova’s The House of Things, an immersive, interactive installation based on the idea that a home is only a home because of the people who live there and the things they fill it with. It’s our things that tell the story of our life and that turn empty spaces into the essence of home. And the home is another of the main themes this year, as the event looks at the new ways we learned to live in them during lockdown.

Floating Forest, the Timberland installation presented in collaboration with Stefano Boeri Interiors, is a floating multisensory forest built on the canal in Milan’s Darsena district. An immersive experience that’s both physical and virtual, its sensory elements merge with the digital. For people who can’t visit the event, a virtual experience will also be available online. Timberland’s installation has grown out of the centrality of nature and sets out to highlight the brand’s vision for a greener, fairer future, in line with the principle of circularity by which nothing is wasted.

Finally, Febal Casa has organized a tour through the streets of Milan in one of the city’s iconic red trams.

 

Brera Design Week

BASE, Celia Marchessaux ©Royal College of Art, Courtesy of Fuorisalone

There are more than 160 events scheduled for Brera Design Week. This event, held under the umbrella of Milan Design Week in the city’s Brera district, focuses on the theme of Designing the Present, Choosing the Future, and therefore also reflects the overarching themes of Fuorisalone. Organized by Studiolabo, the event will tackle the issues of wellbeing, improving our quality of life, product innovation, the research and development of new materials, as well as digital development and NFT, both increasingly relevant in the world of design. And all this will be tackled from the perspective of a constantly evolving market that seeks to be increasingly sustainable to face the challenges of tomorrow.

Porsche is participating in Milan Design Week for the first time with an installation that’s part of The Art of Dreams art initiative. Through the work of artist Ruby Barber, the company explores the interaction between nature and technology in an immersive, dreamlike installation in Palazzo Clerici. Barber has created a sculptural work that combines the fragility of flowers with the technological outlook of the 21st century. In addition to the program of exclusive events, visitors will be able to access the garden of the second courtyard of Palazzo Clerici where a temporary bar has been set up. Yoga and meditation sessions will also be held here every morning.

>>> Read about the Porsche Experience Center Franciacorta, an example of excellence and innovation.

Superstudio, Superdesign Show Fuorisalone 2022 Courtesy of Fuorisalone

Through its tour of Milan’s buildings with LEED certification, Valcucine has highlighted the city’s large number of these structures. It’s now presenting Sustainability beyond Space and Time, a project for a new LEED v4.1 mapping by way of a pathway that reinterprets the history of the company through the lens of the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations to achieve a better, more sustainable future for everyone.

The LE3DERS exhibition, curated by Archivibe, will be presented in Valcucine’s Milano Brera showroom. It will include 3D architectural models of projects by some of the most famous international architecture firms, displayed in an augmented reality experience using Instagram filters.

>>> Read more about Sustainability beyond Space and Time (in italian).

Tortona Design Week, Distretto Tortona Courtesy of Fuorisalone

During Brera Design Week, the Casa Baglioni construction site in Brera will be open to the public. This new hotel, part of the Baglioni Collection and designed by Spagnulo & Partners, will open late this year. For the moment, however, it will be the setting for the art exhibition IN BETWEEN. Between Art and Design.

Curated by the Spagnulo & Partners architecture studio, the exhibition is an attempt to describe the delicate relationship between art and design through the works of three major international artists: Agostino Bonalumi, Anne Imohof, and Giulio Paolini. The works are on loan from the Stefano Cecchi Trust Collection – Fondo per l’Arte, a collection created by entrepreneur Stefano Cecchi with the curatorship of Iole Pellion di Persano.

The exhibition examines the connection between interior design and artworks, highlighting the way that dialogue between the two can lead to the discovery of new languages.

>>> Discover the Baglioni Resort Sardinia, also designed by Spagnulo & Partners.

Other highlights include FENIX®, featuring the new X-KINTM wall surface for interior designers, and FENIX Scenario con De Structura, an installation dedicated to freedom in design.

 

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Credits

Location: Milano
Date: 6-12 giugno 2022

Please refer to the individual images in the gallery to look through the photo credits

 

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