Furniture fair in Milan: trends and mood of the supersalone – culture

Even if you only read product descriptions occasionally, you will have noticed: The last few decades have brought enormous growth to the prefix “design”. This new willingness to show in design and the triumphant advance of the visual media have allowed the Salone del Mobile, which brings together furniture manufacturers, designers and the specialist press in Milan every spring, to grow from a dry gathering of storage and upholstered furniture to something that a city-wide party very much came closer than a fair. The Salone, as they said, had become an event with such charisma and self-efficacy in recent years that people and brands who actually had nothing to contribute to the core business had long been attracted to it. Cars, fashion, electronics – it doesn’t matter, you wanted to be there, and after all, everything was somehow design.

For the manufacturers, there should be an innovative exhibition concept on a greatly reduced exhibition site

Corona has now canceled this pilgrimage to the sacred style twice, and that was a bitter loss for retailers, designers and the city – especially since the furniture and accessories industry mostly got through the lockdown months well to very well. When everyone at home moved their furniture and Googled for home office solutions, impulses from Milan would have been shared even more urgently. But anyone who had the crowded narrowness in the halls and at the countless, curated exhibition spaces in Milan in mind, doubted whether something like this could ever be feasible again at some point in the post-pandemic.

In order to counter these doubts with a sign of life and to alleviate the symptoms of deficiency, those responsible in Milan announced an event in early summer, of the dimensions of which no one had any real idea until the beginning of last Sunday. A so-called “Supersalone” with a significantly different perspective: For the manufacturers there should be an innovative exhibition concept on a greatly reduced exhibition center, for the locals the offer to be there from the start even as non-trade visitors, and in the city itself Stop the international strolling party at least a little under various Corona requirements. The faces of this unusual Salone intermezzo are the architect Stefano Boeri, who designed the hall concept, and the designer Maria Porro, who was surprisingly elected as the new President of the Salone del Mobile two months ago. After a number of venerable gentlemen in this post, the refreshing and unpretentious Porro almost seems like the best news of this super salon.

Because what happened in the exhibition halls had little of the opulence of past years, where the Italian brands had otherwise outdone each other in the construction of gigantic style temples made of sofa landscapes and marble tables. This time there were no such stands, the manufacturers only used narrow, open corridors with wooden walls, which the viewers pushed past. Although these side stripes provided space for a row of innovations, they hardly allowed any staging or anything like a living atmosphere to emerge. Thought democratically and puristically, this arrangement could have worked like a fasting cure after the fat years, like a reflection on the essentials. However, the concept on site was not abstract enough for that; there was still too little type case, so to speak.

Open detailed view

So this time you only touched the brand worlds in the truest sense of the word and rarely felt the desire for furnishing, but often the effort involved in presenting. Only a few were able to perform magic in a small space, such as Molteni & C, who indicated an aircraft cabin with an installation by Ron Gilad and thus staged the re-edition of a Gio Ponti armchair in a very atmospheric way. Probably because of the short lead time, many manufacturers had spared such efforts. The lack of carpeting, which usually made it clear to you when you first walked to the trade fair, that you were standing in the living room, so to speak, also contributed to the nonsensical atmosphere. The interested locals, who populated the exhibition grounds with prams and dangling cameras on the first day, could almost be sorry – because this people’s edition of the furniture fair actually looked as sober as the word sounded.

Open detailed view

In addition, with their new designs, the designers tend to play soft tones and the time seems to have subsided a little, in which colors, expansive shapes and materials were exhausted. A new armchair by star designer Patricia Urquiola for the manufacturer Andreu World, for example, was presented in almost therapeutic color combinations of beige and earth tones, while a new office chair by Arper was only shown in yellow autumn colors. This furniture has a very defensive and healing effect, its message: Quiet, please. Matt pastel or white tones also seem appropriate to many manufacturers in view of the current world situation. Cushions are again often covered in natural linen or similar fabrics with a reformatory or sustainable character, the velvet and plush thunderstorms of past years have largely disappeared – they just don’t seem hygienic enough anymore. Because when retreating into private life is no longer a solemn freestyle, but part of the quarantine obligation, humility and contemplation are also called for there.

Instead of rich and patinated brass surfaces, more and more sterile metals can be seen, for example in Luca Nichetto’s new “Croma” floor lamp – a UFO-green metal stele of clinical perfection. Marble is still an issue, but no longer in the flamboyant variants, but the comparatively low-irritation travertine seems to be attracting more attention again. Even if the reduced number of exhibitors and presented news allows trend determinations to be even less serious this time than usual – the design language of the furniture designs is still rounded, friendly, rough, and often filigree. It goes with the fact that the German design hero Sebastian Herkner received the renowned EDIDA award during the trade fair – after all, Herkner is a master of the soft corner and tasteful blurring. In the few rooms shown, furniture is now kept at a respectful minimum distance, with paravent solutions in between directing aerosol traffic. Or light curtains underline the healthy flow of air, as is the case with the installation by the German carpet specialist Edelgrund in the beautiful Palazzo Litta: carpet strips in delicate colors that descend like a labyrinth from the ceiling and sway in the Milan wind with the windows open, as if to prove that hard-working is ventilated. Oh.