![]() Just as such a piece of music combines different melodies that originally had nothing to do with one another, but are now played simultaneously, in Milan any number of conceivable things meet. And invariably diversity pure and any amount of excess prevails. The Salone del Mobile is held in the Rho trade-fair halls (this year it includes the world's largest lighting fair, the ‘Euroluce'), the Zona Tortona with Superstudio Più and any number of showrooms and satellites, La Triennale and Palazzo Reale with its exhibitions, not to mention hundreds of rooms scattered across town. Designers, manufacturers, aficionados and members of the general public - they all flocked to the fair to celebrate themselves and a great spring fair of design. And thus in 2009 Milan again lived up to its name - the vanity and innovations fair, where not only all those play who have long since been famous, but also those who want to become stars. And nowhere the parties more effervescent than in the Lombard capital. Nowhere else are trade-fair stands and showrooms more opulent and refined, garages, old industrial halls, stores and penthouses more lavishly designed. Nowhere else does the ill-disciplined spirit of design hover so nervously and feverishly for a week over an entire city. Meaning that this year, for all the signs of a crisis, as always nowhere does contemporary design celebrate itself as excessively as in and around the Salone del Mobile. Otherwise, there were as few prophets to be seen as there were confessing penitents. For the finished product is on show at the Magis stand in the Rho trade-fair halls, where it managed to confuse one person or another. That said, we should definitely remember Konstantin Grcic's square timber prototype. For everywhere else things seem all too perfect and finished, slightly over-dressed, and thus no longer attest to the spirit that initially animated them. And the militarily clad man from the cold is merely the cover of its latest issue, on which Grcic poses.ĭuring the few design-overfilled days, the Oratorio in Milan is the only place where the raw is presented and not the cooked, and it is none other than Ambrosius, patron saint of the city, who watches over the special aura of the raw. Clad in summery garb, evidently in a good mood and chatting away, Konstantin Grcic is actually to be found standing outside the entrance to the room, which is decorated with fragments of old frescos and in which DAMn magazine is holding an exhibition of chair prototypes entitled "Prophets & Penitents" - each devised by a renowned designer, including François Azambourg, Maarten Baas, Arik Levy and Patricia Urquiola. Are the designers gearing up for cold weather or has Grcic actually morphed into a design guerrillero and retreated into the tundra of the East? Far from it. Outside the iron gate to the Oratorio della Passione - a small chapel that is part of the basilica of Sant'Ambrogio - I believe I spot Konstantin Grcic in fur hat and camouflage jacket, holding an object made of timber and provisionally screwed together in his hands. The sun is already very warm although it is mid-April and brings a marvelous azure to the sky over Milan. ![]()
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