Material World: Exploring the Textures and Techniques of Milan Design Week

With Salone del Mobile now in its 63rd edition, and the extended Fuorisalone spreading across the city, Milan Design Week needs little introduction. One of, if not the blockbuster design events of the year, exhibitors and visitors alike flock from around the globe to soak up the latest in furniture, lighting, technology and automotive design.

A Unifying Theme Across Salone, Isola, and Fuorisalone

Amid the myriad projects, products and launches, the show organisers continue to pose a framework for their events, offering themes they feel encapsulate the core themes and drivers shaping the design world. This year, ‘humanity’ was the buzzword, with key players leaning into ideas of collectivity and connection. Salone opted for Thought for Humans, and Isola suggested Design is Human, while Fuorisalone invited design, “to not only express creativity and ingenuity but also to foster a sense of unity and global cooperation,” with Connected Worlds.

Material Innovations That Quietly Shaped Milan Design Week

As ever, Milan is also a prime opportunity to seek out the latest material innovations and applications. So while the likes of Google’s Making the Light Visible may have stolen the headlines and Es Devlin’s Library of Light and Michela Picchi’s Hyper Portal might have been captured and shared the most, here are some materially driven projects that may have slipped under the Milan radar.

As we reported last year, one guaranteed material melting pot is the Alcova exhibition. This year the event organisers, who launched the Future Continuous exhibition at Heimtextil in January, expanded proceedings in Milan to four sites. Along with the distinctly Italian and grand venues of Villa Borsani and Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, they added some derelict rawness with the neighbouring former SNIA factory and overgrown Pasino Glasshouse. The latter was once home to one of Europe’s largest white orchid producers, which designer Marcin Rusak played homage to with a series of organic sculptural forms inspired by the rare ghost orchid. Crafted from PLA derived from cornstarch, his translucent objects wouldn’t look out of place on a sci-fi film set.

Terraformæ

Italian experimental design and research studio Terraformæ has made clay its primary focus, utlising the natural substance to create a raw and earthy aesthetic in terracotta. Set up by Alberto De Checchi as an extension of the historic Fornace S.Anselmo, the brand invites a range of collaborators to design ranges for them. Using its deep rooted knowledge of the unpredictable material they work closely with the likes of Sveva Bizzotto and Marco Zitto to produce a beautiful array of 2 and 3 dimensional products, many of which utilise kiln waste.

Terzofoco Ceramics

Fellow Italian brand Terzofoco Ceramics also tradeoff the ancient knowledge of the material in creating LuneUp, a range of cylindrical ceramics that can be used indoors and out. Designed by Emanuel Gargano, each piece is hand turned in various formats and scales, and placed within a lightweight honeycomb aluminum work surface. The design offers flexibility, with the option to create a wash basin or barbeque along with structural support.

Ranieri

Operating from their workshop under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, Ranieri transforms lava stone into artisan objects with an industrial edge. During Milan Design Week, they showcased Under the Volcano, an eye-catching and immersive installation that evoked the primordial power of their studio surroundings. Large angular forms of black lava algorithmically formed by artist Quayola signposted visitors to starkly contrasting monolithic cuboids. While still dark and moody in tone, these blocky forms were clad in their signature glazed lava stone tiles, which come in uniquely long and narrow formats.

Estudio Material

Although based in San Francisco, Estudio Material also draws inspiration from the Italian landscape with their Fragments range. At Milan Design Week, they showed off their unique piece, that is created from remnants of stone yard waste, the furniture range celebrates the raw nature of stone while contrasting it with clinical and precise sheets of metal to form tables and benches.

Sten Studio

Meanwhile, Mexican brand Sten Studio’s installation Cosmic Resonance showcased the transformative possibilities of stone and marble, with an arrangement of totemic sculptures formed of distinctly shaped stacks of the material. A coming together of their Cosmic Traces and Cosmic Relics ranges at Milan Design Week, each totem expresses a mix of textures, forms and colourways, “Inspired by the enduring legacy of observing the cosmos.”

Completedworks

While known for their sculptural approach to jewellery, London-based Completedworks used the event to launch their new selection of interior objects and furniture. In stark contrast to the classical style of Villa Borsani, their bronze pieces, which included a desk and mirror, stood out for their deliberately unrefined aesthetic. Appropriately titled Layer Cake, the range evokes a multilayered sponge with squidged cream filling, juxtaposed by the use of dense metal with its semi-shiny finish.

FAP Ceramiche

FAP Ceramiche also played off the architecture of the building with their Frozen Forest installation. The grouping of plinth-like forms beguiled visitors by both sitting within and reflecting back parts of the Villa Bagatti Valsecchi interior. Using an ombre effect across the surface of each panel, the partly mirrored monoliths were in fact made from porcelain stoneware, playing with volumes of space along with guests’ expectations of such a material.

Studio LoopLoop

We Came Through the Bathroom Window by Studio LoopLoop, created a direct dialogue through their intervention with the space. Taking over a bathroom setting in Villa Bagatti they transformed the space into an anodising workshop. Within they showcased an array of lighting, vessels and tiles, along with Little Dipper. Here visitors were able to engage with the team’s custom built computer driven machine, which printed tiles in real time. A flash of contemporary colour amongst the classical tones of the surroundings, the interactive installation was also a celebration of the studio’s research into plant-based dyes.

Spread

Others shared the same desire to bring colour to the 19th Century surroundings, including Japanese brand Spread. The studio set up by Haruna Yamada and Hirokazu Kobayashi, the team who caught the eye with HARU stuck-on back in 2018, introduced coloured sheets of paper thin folded aluminium. Each was broken up into blocks of colour chosen according to the theories of the “beauty of contrast”, with varying shades created as a result of the shadows formed by the folds.

Studio Gonzalo Bascuñan

Another chromatic and totemic offering came via Studio Gonzalo Bascuñan, whose Carding Collectibles explored the use of recycled cotton. The tall lights are wound in bands of coloured thread produced from masses of discarded fashion waste excavated from the designers native Chile in the Atacama Desert.

Keep your eyes peeled for our next instalment of Milan Material Finds, and future Milan Design Weeks!