Milan Design Week 2015

On April 14-16 I had an opportunity to visit one of the biggest design fairs in Europe – Milan Design Week. The number of events held during the festival oscillated around 2000, which was associated with the need to devote a great deal of time to select the most interesting ones.

Below is a map, which was created to help the incoming visitors get from one exhibition to another. In order to illustrate clearly how impossible it was to visit all the exhibitions I will add that it took me nine hours (with a short break for a meal) to walk around the area marked in a red circle.

Because I spent only three days in Milan – I was able to visit mainly two areas of the festival, that is: Ventura Lambrate and Brera Design District.

Ventura Lambrate was the space in which I came across countless young, creative people presenting their ideas for “good design”. You could find there everything from accessories for animals, through lamps, furniture, interior design components to jewelry.

In the areas mentioned were also Polish exhibitors: mainly furniture designers.

Within the Ventura Lambrate I came across abundant exhibitions, including those where you could see and become familiar with the new techniques and technologies.

 

The exhibition dedicated to living materials was extremely interesting. Stools made from bio-resin mixed with waste, a material with an organic shape changing color depending on the intensity of sunlight, a dish of “growing” materials.

 

I also managed to find what interested me the most – the jewelry. I would like to bring these exciting projects closer:

 

The artists: Neva Balnikova (jewelry) and Hristo Savov (illustrations), members of the studio set from Bulgaria developed a joint project, which presents the process of creating jewelry from creative chaos to the final product.

From the same design studio, Mila Chorbadzhieva and Yana Tankovska displayed their works

The brutalist of the Bulgarian architecture served as an inspiration for Mila to create a collection of rings made of reinforced concrete and epoxy resin.

 

Yana has created a jewelry collection from ceramics based on the earlier work, which was a series of lamps with “bubbles”.

The artists from Univerity Of The Arts London were a fairly strong representation at the Milan design week:

Roisin Johns created a very interesting jewelry with the idea of recycling in mind. Alison Taylor focused on creating collections from renewable materials that can be grown faster than a part of the Earth’s natural resources and their use does not contribute to irreversible damage to the environment.

 

 

A compelling piece of jewelry could also be seen at the Dutch Kunsten Maastricht Academie Beeldende exhibition.

 

 

And at the end, there are several other outstanding realisations from all over the world:

 

 

The display of the exhibition “Artistar Jewels”:

 

 

 

 

Over the Brera Design District were mainly showrooms and houses of big brands dealing with the design of various products. In the evening, that area was full of the people who participated in numerous exhibitions. Navigating between exhibitions there was already a bit harder – not all of the points that I wanted to visit were clearly marked. As a result. sometimes it happened that I did not reach the intended place.

 

 

To sum up – even though I initially selected the exhibitions that I wanted to visit- a multitude of products was almost overwhelming. After three days of continuous communion with the design, I felt exhausted. And only after did I return to Poland, I sat down with pleasure to the collected materials. Milan Design Week 2015 event proved to be extremely inspiring. Even the spaces that were far from the profession of a jewelry designer, were constructed in such a way to stimulate the senses to the maximum. It is worth mentioning that the exhibitions were not only limited to the impact of color and form. Many of them were additionally enriched by the sound stimulus. What is more, space where the schools exhibited literally drowned in food. Students on the spot were making cotton candy and popcorn – thereby forming a mixture of tastes, smells and good design that will long remain in my memory.