The aggregation of young designers
working together for a bearable modern design can be recognized in the flock
of white swallows that breaks the boredom of the green background sky, the
main theme of the Salone Satellite 2008.
An Italian Proverb says that one swallow is not enough to announce the spring;
is a flock of swallows then the symbol of a new design spring or of a new
trend in the research? 570 young designers took part to the eleventh edition
of the Satellite proposing and encouraging, in the form and in the substance,
the development of eco-design objects. Other leading treads of this year's
edition were flexibility, recycling, de-contextuality, transport and game.
A trend that reflects the needs, the habits and way of life of the modern
man, a man always travelling around, a man ready for the change and for
a more flexible life centered on fun, a man looking for the different and
peculiar in order to escape the so called mass homologation that, unfortunately,
involves all of us. The motto is: design's gonna rescue us! There are a
lot of ideas that have been proposed and re-proposed, some of them are often
too unripe, some are on the contrary too ripe, just a few can really be
considered as improvement and as a gush of fresh air, or more appropriately
of fresh light, if we consider that the better ideas concern the field the
illuminitecnica(light-technic).
The Toro&Sarah's hive of lights made up of single addable elements that
according to the artistic and practical needs can be put together, reflecting
the light by the mere contact, is one of the most interesting and alternative
ideas. A modern tribute to the past is the one of the Ecole des Beaux Artes
de Rennes: through a number of exposed electrical wires, fixed to the wall
and laid randomly or according to the needs we plunge into the past, we
are reminded of our granny's house, in a time when the wires were not swallowed
by the walls but adapted to it. An other funny object is the lamp presented
by Tetsuo Shibuya. It resembles a broken junk found on the street and kept
together just by a adhesive tape. The suggestions of Club United and the
“13 Minutes Twice” of Mile
Project are also interesting. The lighted Clock that count hours and
minutes projecting small light beans on the wall framed by the clock structure.
Masaru Ishikawa
unites the game and the food in his work, a real food design experience,
a castle realized with white ceramic boxes, seven base pieces put together
as in a construction game and that can be combined following just the player's
fantasy. The game is also the main character in Sonnleitner's puzzle-carpet.
Then we have the funny and therapeutic “Wordrom”,
the Central unit
design's clothes stand developed for every chronic untidy person, a
new module that makes untidiness fascinating. On the same length is the
cloth stand of Postfossil, a less liberating project that is based nonetheless
on the same idea and transforms untidiness into a creative act.
Then we find a lot of 2 D objects, transportable, packable like toys that
after some unfolding become Three dimensional: bookcase, forniture, the
chairs of Area Progetto, Junio Design, Matthias
Ries, Qed, Hettler Tullmann.
“Design in Kit” for a perfect metropolitan wanderer in the creative elaborations
of D.SIGN21, Pico and Nicola from Bern with his bed that makes use of telescopic
plastic tubes reinforced with glass fibres that can be adapted to the different
sizes of the mattress, easily handled and fixed.
Transformability and adaptabilty taken to every elaboration scale and used
for design objects of every size, to arrive to the Fab Associated's cutlery,
spoon and fork in the same object made of two different materials. Love
of green, responding to this year's theme,sometimes over-ironic in the designs
of Wallonie Belgium, Laboratorio
Experimental diseno, AZ & Mut a French study that shows in its “Tutrix”
a humble but effective idea, a transparent module system bound to be covered
with plants, plants that can be inserted in many different ways allowing
to plan the growth and determine its development. An other protagonist of
this year is the “Redesign”, a creative reuse of objects, extrapolated from
their original function and reinvented, so a pot can turn into a clock,
a drawer or a case into chairs like in Fethi
Atakol's works, gaining a rustic taste.
The products proposed by Smog are more refined, they propose old straw-chairs
ith a touch of modernity represented by a stamped plexiglas Edge.
De-contextuality rhymes with Onsite Studio, in whose projects wrinkled tubes
normally used for other goals are transformed into pleasant sofas to be
admired and lived in their wavy and flexible forms.
Not to forget is the work carried
out by the University
of Belgrade, where everything is different from what it looks like,
where everything is under transformation, objects that mount and dismount
ith each other always generating ne solutions, new forms, new images.
Among the most elegant suggestions are John Niero's ELE chair, the Discu's
table of the Studio
Hausen, Schaub and the several ideas of the Hidden
Art group with the disintegration piece of forniture of Gareth Neal,
Daisuke Hiraiwa's poetry and the nice solution Lina Mauer found for the
ones who love dine in front of the TV.
This year Nils Frederking proposed again sober but genial solutions. Wandering
through the Hall 28 we find more or less intriguing and interesting objects
and sometimes ideas that seam not to have reached their right development,
sometimes we don't even find them.
We find a great deal of quotes, the revival and repetitions of old project
themes. At the end nonetheless we feel anyway a certain positive ferment
in The Salone Satellite. It is one of the fews locations where young designers
have the seldom chance to confront with each other and to present their
ideas in an international stage, to start synergies between universities
all over the world.
We meet there designers and firms interested in their innovative research
projects, so people can talk either good or bad about it, the most important
thing is that people talk about it.
Roberta Patrizia Di Benigno-Channelbeta
LINKS:
Salone del Mobile - Milano 2008
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Channelbeta
Information Channel on Contemporary
Architecture |
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[2008-06-10] |
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pictures provided by the author
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