Once a year, the __design world descends on Milan for Salone del Mobile to explore its furniture and product launches, innovative exhibitions and installations, pop-ups and parties. House & Garden's Ruth Sleightholme shares her highlights from Italy.
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1. Calico
Stylish New York husband and wife team Rachel and Nick Cope launched a collaboration with four designers this year, showing in the Brera district. They have been producing wallpapers since 2013, becoming famous for creating large-scale, abstract atmospheres, reminiscent of high-resolution space photography. This year, they have asked Faye Toogood, Snarkitecture, Ana Kras and BCXY to collaborate on their designs. All were beautiful, but most noteworthy are BCXSY for their adherence to Calico's style; and Faye Toogood for her departure. BCXY's showed highly blown-up oleaginous swirls and bubbles in pretty purples and whites. Faye Toogood created a series of naïve landscape paintings, which Calico blew up into comforting murals.
2) Corian Cabana Club
Under the creative direction of Cabana magazine, and the sponsorship of Corian, seven designers were asked to create a room, each with a country in mind. Among the designers were Ashley Hicks, who created a fabulous English study, and Carolina Irving, whose American bathroom featured a fabulous Corian tub. Our favourite though, was the Russian sitting room of Nathalie Farman Farma, textile designer and interior designer, who creates the most wonderful worlds out of Russian, Persian and Central Asian fabrics. Her sitting room was covered in traditional Russian pattern, mainly from her own collections, and was topped off with two adorable little green chairs.
3) Memphis-Milano
Opposite Wallpaper's 'Holy Handmade' exhibition, we stumbled across Memphis-Milano, a gallery that has over the years collected and specialised in Memphis __design from the 1980s. Two pieces by Sotsass 'Ivory' and 'Tartar' (1985) screamed at us with their bold, tiger-striped orange and black wood grain. All things Memphis have been riding high for the last few years, but this year it is Tiger Woods turn, with Emmemobili showcasing glossy cabinets of high-stripe woods, and Moroso displayed a tigerish table and a bright red, circular coffee table in similar patterns.
4. Laboratorio Paravicini
Off the via Santa Marta, there is a tiny, studio, with pink-plastered walls; smart, gold-flexed light fittings, and patterned china plates smothering every wall. The studio belongs to Laboratorio Paravicini where simple, white plates are hand-painted in intricate and ambitious designs. Every year, we love seeing what they dream up. This year it was 'Zodiac', a collection of plates inspired by stars and the star signs: pretty pretty.
5. Guglielmo Poletti's Equilibrium collection
Amid the crazy crowds of Spazio Rosanna Orlandi - twice our brief conversation was interrupted by hordes of people trying to get a glimpse of Rossana herself - we met a charming Milanese designer called Guglielmo Poletti. His works were charming. They all based around tension. All were structures that would otherwise collapse at the slightest touch, but held as they were in tension by ultra-strong steel wires (or rope), they were at tough as a suspension bridge. Some could even have the tension-ropes unwound by a key or handle, and thus dismantled for removed. Light, intelligent and charming design, watch this space.
6. Sardinian duo Pretziada at Rossana Orlandi
At Rossana Orlandi we met a wonderful couple who operate out of Sardinia. Pretziada are a couple who, having started their careers in New York, had a couple of children and decided to move to Sardinia, where they would explore the traditions of the place through journalism and photography. What most interested us was the traditional rugs, ceramics and fire tools that they had taken into production by persuading local makers to collaborate with designers that they had bought into their fold from outside Sardinia. In the case of the firetools they worked with Ambroise Maggiar of Phillipe Stark Studio fame.
7. Marni
Marni transformed the space under Viale Umbria 42 into a very crazy, colourful and cool space: a sand-filled bunker, marked out by big semi-circles of brightly-dyed sand, in which items of furniture that more closely resembled playpark structures cavorted. The furniture was typical Marni: metal structures and bright, woven plastic. Some of the pieces were solely toys, such as colourful hoop-la cones and rings.
8. Bar Luce
In 2015, Fondazione Prada opened its doors. It's a fashion mecca that mainly attracts selfie-seeking fashion teens, and opposite this main glistening photo-op wall sits BarLuce. Designed by Wes Anderson himself, the bar looks like American ice-cream parlour meets Milanese café. It revels in plasticky pastel upholstery, formica furniture and wood panelling. The wavy ceiling - like a mini version of a vaulted ceiling - is adorable, and the branded paper napkins and uniforms are reminiscent of a toned-down Grand Budapest Hotel.
9. Giopato & Coombes
Italian-English husband and wife Giopato & Coombes have produced a range of new wall lights with a nicely fashion feel. In fact, they are a lot like jewellery. Assemblages of brushed and beaten brass, opalescent and ridged green glass in different formations that provide variations on a theme.
10. DimoreStudio
Since 2003 DimoreStudio have been the coolest thing in Milanese product design. This year they created three rooms of retro-ambitious (sometimes ironic) atmosphere. The soundtrack was All About Eve, fabrics were buffeted by fans, and the colour combinations were ultra-chic. There were large-scale printed ceiling lights, hand-painted tiles, and furniture referencing everything from constructivism to art deco.