MILAN 2017
From suede-wrapped brass to modular marble, Murano glass to 3D-printed ceramics, Salone del Mobile 2017 presented romance, chutzpah and intelligent ideas to an eager world. And Australian design never looked better.
No two Milan Design Weeks are the same. Sometimes you can remember them by the weather — the warm one, the wet one, the windy one, the one when the Icelandic volcano erupted and stopped Europe in its tracks — but more often than not it’s one or two defining images that linger in the memory. I haven’t yet decided if this year’s Salone del Mobile will be that of Ben Gorham and Luca Nichetto’s emotive Murano glass installation for Salviati; of Airbnb’s whimsical Passeggiata; of Dimore
Studio or Studiopepe; or the year that Australian design in Milan finally came of age. Any one of those epithets would be apt but perhaps more succinctly, this was the year of design as theatre. From Republic of Fritz Hansen’s clever Fritz Hotel lobby as conceived by Jaime Hayon, Studiopepe’s bespoke apartment or Tom Dixon’s cleverly retrospective Multiplex (a nod to its location at the city’s Teatro Manzoni cinema), it was definitely a good year for experiential design. It was also a year that pushed the boundaries of technology. The intriguing potentiality of 3D-printed glass at Lexus and the alien beauty of printed ceramics were exciting new voices in the vernacular of craft and design. And to Australians, perhaps most significant of all was the presence in Milan of Local Design amid the frescoes of the Oratorio della Passione. Australian design has taken its place on the world stage, and has never looked more comfortable or more confident in its surroundings.