The Future of Design According to Young Creative Personalities
The Salone Satellite has been held for the second year running within the Milan Salone Internazionale del Mobile. It’s an exhibition where young designers, their ideas and prototypes have the leading role. While this year’s Milan Design Show marks and celebrates its jubilee year, looking back on the past fifty years, the Salone Satellite is the complete opposite, looking ahead into the future, envisioning what the next half-century of design will look like. Over five hundred designers from more than 33 countries, whose works have been shortlisted for the selection, presented themselves at the Pavilions 24 and 22 of the Milan Fiera.
Experts hold that during the Milan Design Week the zones where the Satellite is held are actually the places where the highest-quality exhibits can be seen, so many visitors frequently skip numerous pavilions so as to have the chance to come and see what’s being presented and what’s going on at the Salone’s alternative and younger hip version.
In addition to the up-and-coming design forces at this year’s Salone Satellite exhibition, invitation projects by six designers and architects were also set up as well as three international design faculties, whose task was to provide answers to the following topic “50+50 Projects – Designing the Future.”
Out of the nine aforementioned projects, the most impressive one was the “Social Cave” which was also the most visited due to its dimension of interactivity. It’s a concept developed by students from the Columbia University in the city of New York. The “Cave” offers a new form within which a novel kind of socialization is envisioned, the authors explain, defined as something above and beyond physical and digital contact. The interactive installation was created by a team of 24 international students from the Non Linear Solution Unit research laboratory, headed by supervisor Caterina Tiazzoldi and in collaboration with the interactive designer Mirko Arcese. Their cave is actually an ensemble made from cube-shaped polystyrene elements obtained by one-hundred-percent recycling. Click here for more on the project.
*Social cave – Non Linear Solution Unit, Columbia university
From the whole lot of design concepts and ideas at the Satellites it’s really hard, virtually impossible actually, to single out “the best one”, especially considering the large number of exhibitors and the gamut of products ranging from chairs, tables and armchairs, through illuminating bodies, to swings, shelves or gadgets whose purpose isn’t easy all that easy to categorize. That which is fantastic in this presentational exhibition’s concept is the fact that the designers themselves, each in their own little ten-square-meter showroom zone, present their prototypes. A one-on-one relationship with the designers is what gives this exhibition a special kind of character and atmosphere. The designers’ enthusiasm in presenting their own visions additionally entices the visitors’ desire to ponder on and get to know their ideas better. At this level, one doesn’t get many chances to talk to artists who made some of the most creative design solutions today. We strongly suggest all future Satellite visitors to visit this event by all means.
Scroll down to view an assorted selection of exhibits with an emphasis on innovative, witty and somewhat bizarre ideas.
en&is design is a collaborative team consisting of product and interior designer Enrico Bosa and jewelry and product designer Isabella Lovero. They presented a few of their concepts at the Satellites, functionally following the top-frequent fair supply of chairs and lamps. However, we were blown away by their MegaPhone project. It’s a ceramic device, much the same as an archaic music instrument, actually a passive amplifier, your iPhone or iPod Touch’s ultimate new accessory! All you need to do is set your iPhone or iPod on the Megaphone’s upper side and enjoy the music. As the designers explain, it’s the perfect audio experience of indulging in music without the use of earphones. It can also be used for audio-conferences where you’ll be able to hear the person on the other side perfectly.
*en&is design – Megaphone
We’re not sure if thirty-year-old Belgian designer Pascale de Becker – Pascalina, was popping ecstasy pills back in their heyday, but it’s obvious they serve as a great inspiration to her. Her product design displayed in Milan is basically an oversized pill of the (un)popular nineties drug which Pascalina reformulated into soft elements for sitting Pilli Love and Pilli Luck. As the designer herself explains, she put a completely new spin on these otherwise toxic and dangerous substances. Drug drum-tables are made from foam and rubber, visually similar to the toxic little pills. In addition to ecstasy, in the “healing” seat series, Pascalina has a gigantic “ordinary” white pill, the Tabletto Seat. Click here for more on her other projects.
*Pascalina – Pilli love *Pilli Luck
*Pascalina – Tabletto
Designer Jacobo Munoz flew in to Milan all the way from far-away Mexico to present his sitting element, set to be called the Vagina-lounge when exhibited in Milan. However, after listening to several suggestions and advice on the inappropriateness of such a name, the witty Mexican renamed it the V – lounge. The inappropriate chair-vagina wasn’t in luck, and during our visit to Milan, out of two prototypes, Munoz only had the wooden one, whose construction was late due to transport issues. Similar problems of missing the beginning of the fair befell his colleague and fellow Mexican, who was set to present with him in the same time slot, Laura Noriega. Jacobo explained that her guiding principle is that she also sees the design of the future in the past. Inspired by some ancient ways of recording information, engraving it into stone, the designer presented Levadad, the most contemporary elements for recording data, hard discs and USB flash drives, packaged in stone covers. Scroll further to see what sedimented stones plugged into your laptop look like. You can view more of the affable Mexicans’ works on their official web pages.
*Jacobo Munoz – V-lonuge
*Laura Noriega – Levedad
Yet another Belgian, Raphael Charles and his project Multiple had us captivated with the sheer simplicity of both the idea itself as well as its realization and application processes. Design that offers the possibility of independent assembling of constants has proved to be a hit worldwide, so maybe it’s safe to say that designers that are following that line of design offering users the possibility of “their own designing” are in effect playing it safe. Raphael toyed with the simple wooden beech stick-like elements which have a skillfully hidden magnet within and can be mutually connected thus allowing the user to assemble a table or chair any which way they please.
*Raphael Charles – Multiple
The New York-based Italian designer Carlo Sampietro is obviously so enthralled with New York that the city and its various recognizable segments inspired him to the point of his product design being somewhat of a homage to the Big Apple. The street is in the house is a project through which the designer creates his own NYC diorama, creating furniture and house objects which all seem as if they’ve been plucked right out of various New York avenues. A newspaper holder is transformed into a fish-tank, a traffic sign into a comfortable chair, and the sign from the top of a cab an authentic lamp. Click here to view other product designs from this artist who might as well have I <3 NY tattooed on his forehead.
*The street is in the house – The garden of heaven i Aquarium *Cloche chair
*Aquarium
A few other products that caught our attention, for example the Greenhouse Lamps by Finnish artist Mari Isopahkala, sitting and reclining elements Big Elephant by the Yenndesign Studio which are undoubtedly set to become a big hit, the futuristic reading recliner mlc001 by Mohamed El Khayat and Guangyuan Li and Idle Rocking see-saw chairs by Jarrod Lim as well as Itsy Bitsy by Studio Twenty5ive. However, let us reiterate that we don’t consider these exhibits within the Satellite as, esthetically-wise, the best products we saw. It’s more a matter of these concepts, stories or the designers themselves compelling us to single them out as most interesting. We’re sure that within the next few months we’ll continue to feature, as will most probably other websites covering similar topics, the Satellites and the most interesting product design presented in Milan, so you’ll shortly be able to read about other excellent designers not mentioned in this article.
*Yenndesign – Big elephant
*mlc001 / *Mari Isopahkala – Greenhouse
*Jarrod Lim – Idle rocking / *Twenty5ive – Itsy Bitsy
As far as Croatians in Milan were concerned, as we featured here, at the Milan Design Week within the Fiera off-program, Croatia was represented by some fifteen designers under the joint name Croatian Designers’ Impact. At the Satellite exhibition within the Salone Internazionale del Mobile several other young Croatian authors exhibited their ideas, to be more precise, five Croatian designers presented themselves within the Young Balkan Designers Program, the joint performance of Balkan creative personalities. However, while strolling through the Satellite exhibition we came across yet another representative of Croatian design. She pointed out that she represents herself independently at the Fiera without either any type of association or institution backing her.
*Željka Kavran – Secret_air
The name of this designer is Željka Kavran, a product and graphic designer from Čakovec, Croatia, who graduated Industrial Design at the Milan Politecnic School of Design. The designer, whose excellent blue table “Secret Air” got the most attention, subtly presented the indigenous visual identity of her mother region – Međimurje, through its recognizable patchwork applied to heart-shaped drum tables called “Cupid.”
**Željka Kavran – Cupid
We won’t go into the reasons why this single independent presentation of a Croatian designer didn’t at least partly receive support from qualified institutions, while it certainly needs to be pointed out that considering the quality of Croatian designers’ and their creative solutions more’s the pity we didn’t see even more familiar Croatian faces and products at the most important world fair of up-and-coming design at the Satellites.
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