19 April 2024 |
Plus some other art-adjacent happenings.
Depending on what side of Instagram you were on last week, your feed was either dominated by Coachella or Salone del Mobile content. Or maybe equal parts, because after all, we contain dimensions! Whatever it may be, for those interested in the latter, Salone del Mobile is a feast for the eyes, with plenty of visually engaging installations by fashion and design brands alike. A few worth noting this year? Bottega Veneta returned with another furniture-meets-runway moment while Loewe decided to turn the idea of lamps on their heads. Also in the mix were Prada and Miu Miu’s Design Week adjacent events that featured panel discussions highlighting the worlds of architecture and literature while Gucci went all-in on Ancora red.
Read on to get more info on these events plus everything else you might have missed.
Prada Frames Returns to Milan For the Third Year
What does being home mean to you? It’s an apt question during Salone — after all a beautifully appointed room does make it easy to appreciate the space you dwell in. For Prada, however, it’s deeper than that. And diving into all the meanings of home is the main topic of their third edition of Prada Frames, an annual multidisciplinary symposium. This year’s theme looks to the living environment as a framework to address contemporary changes — home being a place not just of comfort but also shelter and an infrastructure of services. Held at the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, a venue that was itself a home until 1974, the three-day affair featured panel discussions across the rooms. Highlights included a discussion of the bedroom as a comfort zone helmed by Gülsüm Baydar a professor of Architecture from Yaşar University and architect Philippe Rahm as a talk by Anna Pugjaner, co-founder of MAIO on the kitchen as it shapes socio-economic norms and gender biases.
Bottega Veneta’s Ode to Le Corbusier
If you ever find yourself invited to a Bottega Veneta show, chances are you’re sitting on no mere rental chair. For their spring 2023 show creative director Matthieu Blazy chose Gaetano Pesce chairs to line the runway. And for the brand’s latest presentation, fall 2024, Blazy revisited a different design classic — Le Corbusier’s LC14 Tabouret. Inspired by a wooden whiskey box that Le Corbusier found washed up on the rocks beneath Le Cabanon, his cabin at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the Côte d’Azur, the seemingly simple stool has become an icon. Blazy created custom editions for the set and for Salone, he added two new limited-edition versions. One, made with traditional Japanese methods, uses a charred-wood technique to highlight the natural grain of the material. The other, a leather option, features Bottega Veneta’s signature intreccio foulard technique and is available in red, yellow, blue, and green. Limited to a mere 60 leather and 100 wood stools made, they’re definitely a collector’s item. To showcase the pieces, the brand partnered with Cassina and Fondation Le Corbusier on On the Rocks, an installation at Palazzo San Fedele during design week.
Gucci Celebrates Five Italian Design Icons
With a color like Gucci’s Ancora red, it seemed only inevitable that creative director Sabato De Sarno would dabble interiors — the shade lends itself to so many possibilities. For Salone, the luxury house worked on a special project co-curated by Michela Pelizzari that transformed five icons of Italian design. The pieces include a new version of the Storet chest of drawers by Nanda Vigo for Acerbis. A red lamp is a spin on Parola by Gae Aulenti and Piero Castiglioni for FortanaArte while the rug plays off of a style by Piero Portaluppi and the vase is a new colorway for Opachi by Tobia Scarpa. But the item you might have seen all over your feed? An Ancora red Le Mura sofa by Mario Bellini. Shown together it would be the contents of a living room but the team decided to recontextualize. Instead they split them up into an immersive space designed by Spanish architect Guillermo Santoma at the brand’s flagship store. Each room features curved green walls to convey the idea of blurring boundaries — the better to highlight each item on its own as an idea versus a mere product.
Miu Miu Hosts a Chic Book Club
As the go-to label for cool girls who aren’t afraid to embrace their intellectual side, it’s no surprise that Miu Miu hosted a chic literary club during design week. The two day event, inspired by salons and artist collectives, celebrated the work of Sibilla Aleramo and Alba De Céspedes, namely, Aleramo’s 1906 book A Woman and De Céspedes’s 1952 work Forbidden Notebook. Both centered on writing as a method for women to express their emotions and assert their independence across history. Held at Circolo Filologico, there were panel discussions and performances curated by Olga Campofreda. With topics like family, motherhood, and work panelists included Jhumpa Lahiri and Claudia Durastanti among others.
Fendi Casa’s Latest Collection is All About Their Iconic Motifs
For Salone del Mobile this year, Fendi Casa introduced a series of pieces that riffed on the luxury house’s most recognizable prints from their FF logo to the Pequin pattern. Highlights include the F-Affair modular sofa by Controvento. Made to be customizable to your heart’s content, the name is intended to play with the idea that your furniture can take a life on its own — embracing, chasing, and reuniting. Another standout is the F-Stripes sofa designed by Ludovica Serafini and Roberto Palomba. Featuring tone-on-tone top stitching, linear cushions, and tapered feet, it’s detail-oriented without sacrificing comfort. To round it out, the Sohoft by Toan Nguyen is another modular creation, meant to be more casual and soft with goose down filling. For those who prefer an armchair, the Adiada by FFD pays homage to the Brazilian masters who influenced 20th century design while the Lazy Ottavia is exactly what its name implies — a seating option for lounging. The brand also introduced two large tables: Sigillo FF and Archest Legs, both sleek creations that combine form and function. To round it out, you can also see luxurious takes on storage, lighting, and more. Check out the full line here.
Loewe’s 24 Bright Ideas
Last year Loewe asked artists to reinterpret what a chair could look like and this year the brand decided to approach a different furniture element, lamps. As their most ambitious collection to date, they asked 24 artists from around the world to imagine what a lightning element could look like. The result is a series of floor, table, and suspended designs that were put on display at the Palazzo Citterio. Utilizing a range of materials from bamboo to birch twigs to horsehair, paper, and ceramics, the designs ranged from organic to surreal. Highlights included 2019 Loewe craft prize winner Genta Ishizuka’s work which is reminiscent of an amorphous organic cell made from urushi lacquer. Another piece by ceramicist Dame Magdalene Odudno is made from leather while Enrico David’s interpretation brings to mind a standing arched figure. And finally Hafu Matsumoto’s table lamp is a nod to his years of work with bamboo, including training under master weaver Iizuka Shokansai. See some of our favorites below and the full lineup can be found here.
Loro Piana Pays Tribute to Italian Architect Cini Boeri
Architect Cini Boeri would have been 100 this year. Considered one of Milan’s most formidable design forces and known for her elegant creations, it’s only fitting that Loro Piana would pay homage to her with an installation at their headquarters. Featuring Boeri’s most well known pieces, reinterpreted with Loro Piana fabrics, they’re a celebration of the playful side of design that she embodied. The central room hosts the modular Strips system while the surrounding areas include pieces like the Bobo and Boborelax armchairs, the Botolo high and low chairs, and the Pecorelle sofas and armchairs. Guests are invited to sit and touch each creation — a nod to Boeri’s belief that furniture needs to be engaged with. Rendered in cashmere, cashfur, and other luxurious materials, they’re the ultimate expression of her work.
MCM Dips a Toe in the Design World
Historically MCM is best known for their leather goods but the German brand decided to venture into the design space for the first time, with their presentation at Salone del Mobile. Held at the Palazzo Cusani, it was the debut of the MCM Wearable Casa Collection as conceived by Atelier Biagetti and curated by Maria Cristina Didero. The pieces explored the idea of objects that fit into our increasingly futuristic lifestyle, with the result being seven pieces that brought together Bauhaus functionality with modern needs including, naturally, a metaverse version of the space that anyone can browse on . Pieces include the Chatty Sofa, which draws from graffiti as well as Gufram’s Bocca sofa for its design as well as the Tatamu, which reinterprets Tatami mats into a soft rolled object that can become anything you’d like to sit on. The Mind Teaser is another transformative item that can be a stool, chair or coffee table and brings to mind a Rubik’s Cube as well as Mario Bellini’s work. For lighting, they imagined the Clepsydra Lantern, a light that can follow you wherever your travels take you while the Magic Gilet is a wearable utility vest that draws from a Vitra design.
Issey Miyake Gets Prickly
Normally when you want a rug to be soft underfoot but that’s not always the case — think about those so-called pressure point mats that feel like sharp jabs to the soles. Well, for design week Issey Miyake took it one step further, with an installation that might technically be a carpet in name but is anything but meant to be laid on the floor. Working in conjunction with Dutch collective We Make Carpets, the two pieces use everyday objects in delicate compositions. The first utilizes 60,000 bamboo skewers that were dipped into batches of paint before being inserted one-by-one by hand into the foam base. Laid over a wooden frame, the base itself was made without screws or glue, highlighting a painstaking attention to detail. For the second piece, the collective was inspired by the pins used in clothes-making, jabbing them into a foam layer that is then fitted into a wooden frame that allows them to distort open and close to create organic patterns. Definitely not something you want to jab you but beautiful to admire from a distance!
Larroudé Partners Up With Artist Gabriela Noelle
Speaking of artists and design-, Larroudé is working with Miami-based Cuban-American artist Gabriela Noelle on a capsule collection of playful shoes. Noelle, who is best known for her interactive objects inspired by childhood, adds a sense of child-like wonder to six styles, including a limited edition style that will be numbered. Inspired by femininity and blossoming flowers, the sandals include two flat styles, two with acrylic kitten heels, and two showstoppers with rainbow detailing. You can shop either online or at Noelle’s pop-up exhibit April Flowers in Miami Design District, where you can experience the oversized sculptures and see the pieces that inspired the shoes.
