Everything is set for Lake Como Design Festival

Lake Como will soon (September 17-25) serve as the background of the Lake Como Design Festival, a themed annual event that offers exhibitions, reflections and talks through a series of events in historical, unknown and almost forgotten places in and around the historic center of the city of Como.

 

The festival

The Festival’s mission is to establish an original dialogue between history, architecture, design and art. A target that, according to the festival’s creator and artistic director Lorenzo Butti, has been well achieved: “We are more than ever convinced of the validity of the path of knowledge and awareness we have embarked upon and that it is making a real contribution to encouraging the public at large to actively explore the wealth of the artistic and architectural heritage of the Lake Como area. We can become aware of and celebrate our diversity through site-specific exhibitions of art and design in a renewed dialogue between different cultures”.
The event is conceived and promoted by Wonderlake Como, a collection of ideas and people that take up an “out-of-the-ordinary” point of view on the community and setting of Lake Como. Now at its fourth edition, it will explore the ongoing theme of “Neo-nomadism” – a concept moving seamlessly between real and digital life that looks at new (but also historical) movements of culture and labor that are now very much associated with the phenomena of the great economic divide and of climate change. 

 

>>> Discover Villa Molli in Sala Comacina: a home poised between lake and sky

 

The program

Not only design talks featuring architects and designers, industry professionals, and Italian intellectuals of national and international renown: the Festival’s program includes the ERRANTI, l'arte oltre il limite del visibile collective exhibition curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti. Here, the works of several important personalities from the world of art and design such as Letizia Cariello, Francesco Jodice, Bruno Munari, Daniela Novello and Fabio Novembre, are pictured as guides entrusted with the task of marking out the route and tracing the horizon. Photographs, videos, installations, objects, projects stimulate us to reflect on the idea of departing, of the work itself as a nomadic condition poised between physical and symbolic territories.
This year’s edition also sees the return of the open call for independent designers, publishers and galleries dedicated to contemporary design, whose works will be sold through an online auction in collaboration with Catawiki.
Journalist Prashanth Cattaneo has been entrusted with curating the talk section entitled Refreshment, which offers visitors an opportunity to meet and to get to know authors and experts in Italian design.

 

The places

The events, exhibitions and talks will be held in some wonderful locations such as the Casartelli Science Museum, Casa Bianca and Villa Gallia. The “Broletto” – a medieval building that used to be Como municipal building and now serves as an art exhibitions and events spot – will also stand out as protagonist of the festival.

 

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