Architects Take Milan, Part 2: Collaborations Abounded At This Year’s Furniture Fair
Parrish Collection from Emeco.
AN had boots on the ground at the 2013 Milan Furniture Fair, taking the air and parsing the differences. This year saw an abundance of collaborations between furniture designers and architects. What follows is the second half of our greatest hits, everything from modular shelving and sleek hardware to design-forward consoles and practical seating. View even more architect-designed furniture from Milan in the first section of our roundup here.
Parrish Collection
Emeco
In conjunction with its collaboration with Konstantin Grcic on the mobile interiors of the new Parrish Art Museum, Emeco released the Parrish Collection of modular indoor–outdoor chairs and tables. Chairs are available with three recycled aluminum frame designs that can be combined into four seat options, including one made of locally sourced wood from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Architects Take Milan> Part 1: Collaborations Abounded At This Year’s Furniture Fair
Kelly Seating from Tacchini.
AN had boots on the ground at the 2013 Milan Furniture Fair, taking the air and parsing the differences. This year saw an abundance of collaborations between furniture designers and architects. What follows is the first half of our greatest hits, everything from modular shelving and sleek hardware to design-forward consoles and practical seating. View even more architect-designed furniture from Milan in the second section of our roundup here.
Kelly Seating
Tacchini
Multidisciplinary design office Claesson Koivisto Rune was inspired by American artist Ellsworth Kelly when they created the Kelly seating collection for Tacchini. The line features three pieces—Kelly E, H, and L—with cushions that reference the bold colors and irregular shapes common in the artist’s sculptures atop delicate frames coated in matching paint.
International Architects Call On Milan’s Mayor To Reinstate Stefano Boeri
Stefano Boeri.
Stefano Boeri—the talented architect, politician, and former editor of Domus—was summarily dismissed this week from his position as Councillor for Culture, Fashion, and Design for the city of Milan. Boeri, who for several years has tried to bring architecture and design into official decision making process, has apparently butted heads with Milan’s Mayor Giuliano Pisapia and has been pushed out the door.
He has, according to one observer of Italian politics, clashed with the mayor “over how much he spent on an exhibition,” who may be using the country’s budget woes as an excuse to sack a potential political opponent.
Boeri was coordinating the upcoming Milan Year of Culture and is not gong without a fight. A petition signed by host of major architects, artists, and cultural workers is being distributed to the press to put pressure on the mayor to bring Boeri back into government.
!melk in Milan
!melk designed pergolas for Milan's new CityLife development. (Photo: !melk)
!melk, a brand new landscape architecture and urban design firm, is set to join Arata Isozaki, Daniel Libeskind, and Zaha Hadid, among others, for CityLife, an enormous development planned for the historic Fiera di Milano neighborhood in Milan. The New York-based !melk, which was founded less than a year ago when Jerry van Eyck left West 8 and teamed up with Evan Rose, won an international competition to design a multi-level piazza, sculpture park, and butterfly garden/pavilion situated within Libeskind’s master plan. CityLife will include skyscrapers by Isozaki, Libeskind and Hadid, as well as a museum of modern art, commercial center, housing complexes, and a new subway station. !melk collaborated on its submission with the London-based landscape architect Gustafson Porter as well as One Works and Arup in Milan. Read More
La Serenissima Strikes Again
Venice is seeking to rival Milan's annual design fair, the Salone, above.
Is Italy returning to medieval-era warfare between city-states Milan and Venice? AN’s own Julie V. Iovine reports from Milan that Milanese and Lombardy officials are more than a bit miffed that Venice is proposing to start its own design fair in 2011, seeking to steal the spotlight from the nation’s long-established epicenter of design. Read More
Ciao, Milano!
Lamp shades on Montenapoleone get the Milanese into the swing of the ubiquitous fair.
CLICK TO LAUNCH SLIDESHOW.
We recently returned from Milan, having taken in the annual Furniture Fair and biannual Euroluce. Click the picture above for a slideshow of the proceeding, or read our full report here.
Ritorniamo
The good life. (Courtesy Riva)
Last fall, the editors of The Architect’s Newspaper spent a week in Venice reporting on the architecture biennale. One of our fondest Venetian memories—the few times we could afford them—was moving around La Serenissima in water taxis. As we’ve noted before, the Venetian water taxi is the world’s most elegant form of public transportation: hand-made wooden motor boats with tuck-and-rolled leather seating, customized canvas hoods, and spit-shined wooden hulls and decks. Well, the editors are headed back to Italy, this time for Milan’s Saloni di Mobile.
More Mint Milano
Following our report on the Porta Nuova project, developed by Hines in Milan, Grimshaw has released new images of their Exhibition Hall, an anchor in the development’s Garibaldi section. The Exhibition Hall features a dramatic metal skin draped over the building’s roof and walls, which peels into ribbon-like forms to reveal the structure within. The building follows the contours of the site, creating an “urban sculpture,” according to a statement by the architects. The piazza-facing entrance is fully glazed, revealing the activity inside and helping to animate the public space. A top floor restaurant will lead to a large roof terrace with commanding views of the Alps. Like all of Porta Nuova, the Exhibition Hall will be built to LEED standards.
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