Preparations for a new Special 2021 event under the banner of the Salone del Mobile. Milano are firmly under way, with a new name and logo – “supersalone” – a new format, and five designers working alongside curator Stefano Boeri: Andrea Caputo, Maria Cristina
Didero, Anniina Koivu, Lukas Wegwerth and Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual of Studio Folder.
The “supersalone” Special 2021 Salone del Mobile.Milano event, slated for 5 th to 10th September at Rho, Fiera Milano is beginning to take shape. Thanks to a new concept, an exceptional team of curators and the fact that it will be the first large design exhibition to open its doors, it promises to reaffirm the centrality of Milan and the Salone del Mobile.Milano on the international design, cultural and innovation scene.
“supersalone”: a highly auspicious name and logo, which serves as the manifesto for the event. This will be a unique occasion, a one-off event, powerfully and immediately attractive and communicative. It will be open every day, not just to professionals but also to the general public; it will not be a purely commercial event, but will foster original cross-pollinations, openings up, fusions and extroversions while fully respecting the health regulations and protocols imposed nationally to combat the spread of Coronavirus.
The architect Stefano Boeri and an international team of collaborators – Andrea Caputo, Maria Cristina Didero, Anniina Koivu, Lukas Wegwerth and Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual of Studio Folder – all carefully selected by Mr. Boeri on the basis of their abilities and skills as designers, curators, installation and graphic designers, will gather round the table. The team will work with Giorgio Donà, co-founder and director of Stefano Boeri Interiors, pooling openness, enthusiasm, awareness and rigour in a bid to come up with innovative itineraries that will valorise projects and products in setting built on proximity, reflection and sharing.
The proposed format will be that of a large design library, which will celebrate the renewed attention and care devoted to contemporary living spaces, designed to valorise and harmonise the new products and creations brought out by the companies over the last 18 months with their traditional products which, thanks to the debut of the Salone del Mobile.Milano digital platform, will be available to purchase at the culmination of a packed and engaging customer journey (part of the profits will go to a charitable cause).
The layout will consist of long parallel sets, designed for the specific goods categories, and will allow the companies to narrate their own identities and their own products on vertical walls and, in some cases, on horizontal surfaces, both of which will be modular. This fluid and dynamic exhibition set-up will allow visitors to navigate freely inside a huge national and international archive of creativity, excellence and savoir faire. With circularity and sustainability uppermost, all the display materials and components have been designed to be dismantled and reused. Furthermore, thanks to the Forestami project, a green welcome area with 200 trees, will be set up at the East Gate of the fairgrounds. The trees will subsequently be relocated to Milan’s metropolitan area after the six-day event.
The display in the fairgrounds will be cross-pollinated and broken up by themed areas and itineraries devised by Studio Stefano Boeri Architetti and the five co-designers: arenas for talks on knowledge sharing and deepening, dedicated lounges for commercial and business company meetings, areas reserved for young students at design schools and for a display of chairs awarded with the Compasso d’Oro curated by the ADI, food courts conceived and set up in partnership with Identità Golose – The International Chef Congress, and socialising and relaxation areas. A special programme of meetings with some of the leading figures on the contemporary scene and thinkers of tomorrow will alternate with large live music events, in collaboration with the top, most representative sectoral experts. A different way of conceiving the exhibition space, allowing it to become a place with multiple opportunities for interface and, simultaneously, an invitation to stop, think and feel and, therefore, an antidote to the hasty trivialisation of so many exhibitions. Triennale Milano will be the hub of the “supersalone” city, with a range of cultural offerings including a series of totally original projects on top of the institution’s exhibitions.
“The “supersalone” is the result of the generosity and the creativity of the companies and design professionals at an extremely delicate point in the recovery and relaunch of the economy and culture. For the first time, the Salone del Mobile.Milano will be open throughout to the great consumer public, allowing them a chance to select and purchase the very best international design products. Thanks to the joint efforts of thousands of producers, professionals, retailers, technicians, workmen, display specialists, designers and fans, for six days the Rho Fairgrounds will once again be the epicentre of international design. I would like to thank FederlegnoArredo and the Salone del Mobile.Milano for their confidence in me and for their courage in being determined to honour such an important appointment”, said the architect Stefano Boeri.
In this context, the combination of digital and physical presence will make for a highly engaging experience. The new Salone del Mobile.Milano platform, which will launch on 30th June, has been designed to promote the design on exhibit with original content and medium-specific language, and to put the user at the centre of the event before, during and after their visit. The exhibition spaces and themed itineraries will dialogue with the platform in a wholly original manner, and the products visualised and reserved for later purchase. It is a digital crossroads that will create new forms of integration and interconnection between different worlds, users and markets.
Claudio Feltrin, President of FederlegnoArredo, had this to say: “Taking on the challenge of organising a special event – a “supersalone” – in such a difficult and complicated year is a tangible sign of the extent to which our entrepreneurs and the Federation have poured their hearts into overcoming the obstacles in order to bring the design community, the national and international buyers, the media and the general public back to the Rho fairgrounds, allowing them to take part in a globally unprecedented event that only the city of Milan is capable of hosting. An extraordinarily different event, suited to a unique period in history in which the leaders find the strongest stimuli to demonstrate their own leadership. Giving up would have been easy, but that’s not part of our companies’ DNA. Any other sort of initiative would just have been a poor imitation and it was our duty to preserve the success story that has seen the wood-furnishing sector, and all its companies, become one of the undisputed standard-bearers of Made in Italy around the world: a one-off built on professionalism, far-sightedness and what I would describe as a sartorial ability to conceive and imagine spaces and furnishing”.
“We are well aware that September’s will be a different sort of edition and, given the current exceptional circumstances, it could not have been otherwise, but if there is a common thread that ties it to the Salone del Mobile.Milano it is the indisputable quality of the products on show and the prestige of our brands, which will be enhanced and valorised by the exhibition layout designed by Stefano Boeri and the specially-selected curators. I am quite sure that the result will be amazing, and I should like to thank all those who, from Fiera Milano to the local, regional and national institutions, have been and will continue to be by our side during this adventure. The design companies are ready to return to the international scene stronger than ever, and the September event will be the best possible way of announcing to the world that our sector is firmly in place and keen to embrace new challenges”, added Mr. Feltrin.
Maria Porro, President of Assarredo, commented: “The current trend reassesses the centrality of our homes and the need to invest in the places in which we live, to rethink private and communal spaces by designing durable furnishing, based on the new logistics triggered by the current situation. The September event will be an invaluable opportunity for the companies to present their 2021 products that have not yet been exhibited. At a time of huge change, the ability to reinvent will be the main driver of this unique edition which, thanks to tremendous teamwork, will be the event that signals not just the recovery of our sector, but that of the country as a whole. A live, shared event at last, an opportunity for the design sector to focus all its energies on best expressing the quality that sets it apart. Quality that needs to be experienced. We have learned over the last few months that we can no longer do without a digital presence, and the innovative Salone platform will be a tremendous opportunity for the companies, a new medium designed not just for presenting products, but for offering services, underpinning and closely interacting with the physical event, a great shared home in which Made in Italy design can unveil its ongoing research and innovation to the world”.