Milan Design Week 2024: Materia Natura

With Materia Natura (Matter Nature), therefore, Fuorisalone.it invites people to explore the connection between these two words. A visual campaign curated by Nicola Ricciardi, designed by EX. (Andrea Cassi, Michele Versaci) and Giorgio Ferrero (MYBOSSWAS), illustrates the theme with a work in five projects.

Art and design

Nicola Ricciardi, art director of miart, has designed, together with Studiolabo, a guide to art-related paths within Milan Design Week. The collaboration aims to offer the vast Fuorisalone audience content to help them discover the city from different points of view. Thus, Fuorisalone.it will host a guide to selected Milanese galleries and unpublished routes. The guide is curated by Nicola Riccardi, to discover exhibitions and places in the city. In addition, there will be lists of events involving artists or collectives within the Milan Design Week schedule of events. More info at Percorso.miart.it

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Milan Design Week Districts

Brera Design District

The Brera Design District is now in its 15th edition. At Milan Design Week 2024, Brera Design District supports the underlying theme, Materia Natura, and encourages a thought on contemporary design. Man represents the point of contact between matter and nature. Today, only through the principles of circular economy we can imagine a sustainable future. In 2024, Brera Design Week expects to exceed a total of 210 events, with a total forecast of more than 260 events present in the district, also counting the 196 permanent showrooms.

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Brera Design District 2024

In 2024, Brera Design District presents Brera Mag, a magazine dedicated to Brera. Brera Mag aims to be a new collectible guide distributed free of charge in about 400 places in the city, including hotels, businesses, and cultural and artistic points of interest. It will be a point of reference to navigate the district for the many tourists and professionals who visit Milan all year round and for the many Milanese who enjoy discovering and experiencing their city to the fullest.

Main sponsors at Brera Design District

Porsche, Valcucine, and Grand Seiko are the event’s main sponsors. Porsche returns for a second time and presents The Pattern of Dreams. This is the 5th edition of its traveling art and design series, The Art of Dreams. The initiative is a global Porsche project to connect the public with creative communities.
Valcucine, on the other hand, presents ‘Architectural Scenarios’. It’s a group exhibition that enhances the integration of its kitchen program with architecture, thanks to the design interpretation of architecture studios ARRCC, i29, and Neri&Hu.

On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2024, Grand Seiko presents ‘Matter in Motion’ at Casa Brera, which explores the balance between man and nature. The partnership with Fuorisalone continues for the second year, with a unique installation reinterpreting the ‘Materia Natura’ theme. A birch forest will immerse visitors in nature, and they can admire Grand Seiko’s Kodo Constant-force Tourbillon watch.

5Vie Design Week: Design for Good

The 5VIE Design Week returns in 2024 with its tenth edition. The widespread event, focuses on signature and collectible design, high craftsmanship, and contamination of design with art. This year’s title, ‘Design for Good,’ aims to invite people to consider design as a tool for creating and cultivating deep human connections, with a view to sustainability rooted in mutual care.

International curators, artists, and designers will engage with this theme through a series of exhibitions produced by 5Vie, flanking exhibitions by independent studios, companies, and designers.

The exhibitions and installations produced by 5VIE this year address themes such as spirituality, connection to Nature, and relationship to one’s historical roots. Can design tap into an intimate and universal good? Can design take care? Care is a resilient and tenacious word, expressing the capacity for vigilant and constant dedication. Current events pose contingent challenges, and the task of design is to remain open, translating urgency into opportunity. In confronting innovation and sustainability, design must take time to re-connect to produce new, fair, and good design modes. ‘Design for Good’ is a play on words: a ‘wish that design is ‘for real’ and, above all, that it’s focused on a common good.

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French Design 100 exhibition, at Institute français Milano

Isola Design Festival

The Isola Design Festival also comes back in 2024, with its eighth edition.

Isola Design Festival presents an evolution of its successful format by landing in brand new locations, such as Lampo Milano, WAO PL7 and Galleria Bonelli, unprecedented for Milan Design Week. Isola Design Festival aims to turn these hidden gems of the neighborhood into the district’s new hotspots. The 2024 event includes exhibitions, installations, workshops, live performances, and talks involving more than 320 international designers, design studios, creatives, producers, and more than 40 locations, including the three main hubs.

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Isola Design Gallery at Isola Design Festival

The underlying theme of 2024 is ‘This Future is Currently Unavailable’. To connect different cultures and countries, Isola brings different Middle and Far East realities to Milan. Continuing the path started in 2023, Isola Design Festival presents collaborations with partners from Saudi Arabia and the EAU through the exhibition ‘Routes to Roots,’ designed for Tanween (Ithra Creativity Conference), and ‘Anatolia,’ presented for the first time in Downtown Dubai.

Isola Design Festival 2024 develops around three main hubs – Lampo Milano, WAO PL7, and Stecca 3.0 – and five exhibitions curated by Isola’s creative team led by Elif Resitoglu (creative director of Isola Design Group) and other guest curators.

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Isola Design Festival

Alcova 2024: the seventh edition

In 2024, the Alcova group show, curated by Valentina Ciuffi (Studio Vedét) and Joseph Grima (Space Caviar), returns with its seventh edition. New to the 2024 edition is the location. To exhibit the works of the different participants, in fact, Alcova selected two villas on the outskirts of Milan: Villa Borsani and Villa Bagatti Valsecchi.

Villa Borsani, which dates back to 1945, is a masterpiece of modernist architecture by Osvaldo Borsani. Known for its lush gardens and distinctive elements, such as Lucio Fontana’s fireplace, it’s home to the Osvaldo Borsani Archives.

Villa Borsani. Photo Piergiorgio Sorgetti, courtesy Alcova

Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, on the other hand, is one of the most significant examples of 19th-century villae architecture in Lombardy. Both villas, reachable from downtown Milan in 25 minutes by the S2 and S4 trains, will host Alcova’s curated selection of experimental designers, institutions and a series of lectures and performances exploring the future of living and making.

Villa Bagatti Valsecchi. Photo Piergiorgio Sorgetti, courtesy Alcova

Villa Borsani, via Umberto l, 148, Varedo (MI)
Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, via Vittorio Emanuele ll, 48, Varedo (MI)

Superdesign Show: curatorial design

The Superdesign Show, Superstudio’s event that created the Tortona Design District since 2000, is coming back again in 2024, with an exciting new edition. The next edition will feature 11 countries, from three continents, with 80 brands and nearly 40 cutting-edge projects to explore the latest trends and future visions of design. Superdesign Show is a project by Gisella Borioli, with art direction by Giulio Cappellini and coordination by Laura Vella.

Superstudio, photo Riccardo Diotallevi, courtesy Superstudio

This year’s theme, ‘Thinking Different – everything, everywhere, everyone’, is a clear invitation to stage, in the spaces of Superstudio Più, the best of international design, extending its scope to unusual areas. With the awareness that we can reinvent everything, the challenge is to break out of the box. This year’s bold theme also guides Giulio Cappellini, the event’s art director, in his choice of an unprecedented color for the walls of the Superdesign Show. An unusual bright green that speaks of nature, peace, serenity and brings joy.

Diverse thinking at Superstudio

In the ‘Dictionary of Diverse Thinking,’ the keywords on the walls take visitors on a journey of discovery of bold ideas. Behind each word is a design project, and behind each project is human ingenuity, which no AI can replace. Superdesign Show emphasizes not only single words; it also stimulates a question, ‘Why Not?’. An exhibition by graphic artist Daniele Cima emphasizes and amplifies this question.

‘Think different!’ is the subliminal imperative underlying any design approach. Today, in a world where it seems that we have invented everything and explored every territory, ‘thinking outside the box’ is not easy. Yet, thinking differently becomes necessary to give the correct answers to the Generation Z youth. It’s also essential to provide the right answers to nature, which demands more respect, and to technology, which, by simplifying our lives, redefines how we interact with the world.

Zona Sarpi (Sarpi Zone)

Milan Design Week 2024 will see the debut of Zona Sarpi. The platform promotes the network of design-related cultural projects and events in the Paolo Sarpi Street neighborhood. Events will touch on Via Paolo Sarpi, involving the Chinese Cultural Center, the Fabbrica del Vapore and the ADI Design Museum. Also participating is the Chinese community, which is turning a century old in Milan. The Zona Sarpi project is curated by Michele Brunello of Progetto CMR Group and Luca Fois, founder of the historic Zona Tortona.

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Zona Sarpi

Zona Sarpi collaborates with the neighborhood’s hybrid and active community: designers, brands and institutions will showcase Chinese design and lifestyle quality. Among the most striking interventions, curated by DONTSTOP Architettura, will be the China Town Portal. It’s a creation by Tommaso Lanciani and the street artist Pao, which takes Milanese and Chinese stylistic features and is enriched with drawings made by children from the neighborhood.
The Zona Sarpi route develops around three main hubs in the neighborhood.

Zona Sarpi: Chinese culture and design

Via Paolo Sarpi and the Chinese Cultural Center are the district’s epicenter. Here, independent designers will display urban design projects and prototypes. The projects will be on display on the windows of clubs and stores and in the street’s public space. The Chinese Cultural Center will host several workshops, including one by the RO.UP group. It will offer an installation and activities on the theme of garment reuse. In addition, there are synergies with LOM Officine Monumentale, Luisa Delle Piane’s Gallery of Excellence, designer Francesco Faccin’s studio, and the nearby Fondazione Sozzani.

Zona Sarpi

The Fabbrica del Vapore, for Milan Design Week 2024, proposes the theme ‘Everyday Transformations and Innovations.’ The Ex-Cisterne (former tanks) spaces of the Fabbrica del Vapore will host the exhibition ‘Changes, Know Now China’. The exhibition features a selection of projects promoted by Chinese cities and design weeks. With more than 20 projects, the exhibition explores the changes reshaping the Chinese lifestyle. Chinese Design Weeks, universities, research institutes, designers, and companies will present in Milan a kaleidoscope of projects that represent the contemporary change taking place in dialogue with the Community of Designers that animates ZONA SARPI.

The ADI Design Museum will showcase a selection of outstanding industrial products developed between China and the West. These include the futuristic carbon bicycles by Lotus Life, a section dedicated to the design of the British automobile company.

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Porta Venezia Design District

The Porta Venezia Design District returns to Milan Design Week 2024; the second edition carries the theme ‘EverythinK is design’. Respecting inclusiveness and diversity, which are intrinsic features of the district, EverythinK is design intends to encompass multiple different fields within the concept of design.
The concept is inspired by Paul Rand, the American graphic designer who changed visual communication.

Porta Venezia Design District is the new Fuorisalone district. It was created to enhance the neighborhood’s contemporaneity and diversity and express a more revolutionary idea of design.

Among the various projects of Porta Venezia District, Capsule Plaza will return in 2024. The Capsule Plaza curatorial platform takes up the Spazio Maiocchi and, by 2024, will extend to 10 Corso Como, Milan’s iconic concept store. A hybrid between a trade fair and a group exhibition, Capsule Plaza will once again bring together designers and brands from different creative sectors. Alessio Acari curated the 2024 edition of Capsule Plaza in Milan with architect Paul Cornet. Among the 2024 exhibitors will be Rimowa, Herzog & De Meuron, Poltronova feat. Harry Nuriev, Verner Panton (in collaboration with Vitra, Amini, &Tradition, Verpan, Offecct, Montana), BD Barcelona feat. Muller Van Severen, Iittala feat. Damsel Elysium, Niceworkshop, Marsotto Edizioni feat. David/Nicolas, and others. The platform also includes a program of lectures, workshops, and pop-ups featuring various designers, including Marc Newson, Max Lamb, Samuel Ross, and others.

Tortona Rocks

The event Tortona Rocks, one of the Tortona area’s event circuits, returns to Milan Design Week with its ninth edition. Tortona Rocks 2024 investigates the new design attitudes, between ecological responsibility and enhancement of know-how. Among the highlights of the 2024 edition there’s IKEA, with the ‘1st’ exhibition. Archiproducts Milano presents the Aqua project, curated by Studiopepe, while Preciosa radiates iridescent glows with the Crystal Beat II installation. On the other hand, Sun Appeal redefines the boundaries between beauty and architecture with innovative photovoltaic panels.

For the second year in a row at the Visconti Pavilion, IKEA presents ‘1st’. The exhibition explores the many ‘firsts’ that people experience when they move into their first home. The space, designed by architect Midori Hasuike and spatial designer Emerzon, will tell the story of what happens when people go to live alone for the first time. This is a universal experience, yet unique and different for each of us.

Preciosa Lighting

Tortona Rocks circuit also features designer furniture from Italian and foreign brands. FROMM is a Qatari company that has debuted on the Milan scene for the past two years. This year, FROMM presents the Ottoman collection, a project by Antonio Aricò. At Opificio 31, Preciosa Lighting celebrates the legacy of Bohemian crystal with its Crystal Beat installation. Finally, Midj presents projects by several international designers, including Paola Navone, Karim Rashid and Giulio Iacchetti.

The Pavo sofa, by Antonio Aricò for FROMM

Tortona Design Week

Among the different circuits in the Via Tortona area, Tortona Design Week is also back for the 2024 edition. As the theme of the 2024 edition, TDW proposes a ‘Walk of Design’ through the iconic places of the Tortona district. On the route, installations and exhibitions alternate between indoor and outdoor spaces, along streets and inside old factories and courtyards. Places such as the evocative ‘Bridge of Artists,’ Old Factory 14 with its distinctive smokestack, the Traviganti Turnery, the imposing Ex Ansaldo complex, Opificio 31 and Bugatti Galvanotechnics, to name a few, are places of the past that are now home to creativity and creative people. We can mention Nardi Outdoor, Karimoku, Bloom | Ora ïto, Ceramica Dolomite, Lexus, and others among the exhibitors.

Milan Design Week 2024