finally, good weather during milan design week

image © designboom

‘why do people say – milan design week has had a rinascità (a rebirth) – ? everyone talks about this year’s salone del mobile, saying, -it’s great in milan again- but it was great last year too. only, it rained. the weather was not generous.‘ – piero lissoni

INTRO
designboom usually does not like to publish opinionated articles.
we do not really feel ‘local’, and we do not want designboom to be identified as an italian or milanese publication, despite having our headquarters in milan. rather, our online magazine is created by an international team, with the ambition of being selective but objective.

we are publishing this piece only, because we were asked to counter-balance the recent propaganda putting down milan design week as host for this international event, and exploiting the weakness of the manufacturing sector (obviously with an ulterior motive). as with every year, during this occasion, we meet with lots of designers and architects, company owners and technicians, people physically contributing to what is by far the biggest event of its kind.

many approached us, asking for that big favor – to look at the related journalistic pieces that discredit the efforts and results of the fair and off-site program in context. and many have expressed the need for an intervening voice in the field of online communication, with respect to the below mentioned publication and that of other design blogs, which have joined the trending negative discussion.  there is a risk that people (that might have not seen the event) are starting to talk and repeat/distribute these opinions without a real comprehension of the situation. please note: in this article designboom tries NOT to express any personal opinion, we limit ourselves to feature statistics, a short video contribute and a translation of an article that recently appeared in an italian newspaper.

here we go …

finally, good weather during milan design week
the 53rd edition of the milan furniture fair brought in a total of 357,212 visitors, 311,781 of them sector operators – up by 13% from the 2013 edition; and the off-site events have seen even more of the public (young designers, design students, architects, families,…) in town.

‘our goal was to make this the best salone del mobile in the world and the results have far exceeded our expectations,’ said claudio luti, president of the salone del mobile (milan furniture fair). ‘buyers, journalists and designers have seen first hand just how superlative and creative our production chain is, recognising the value of ‘made in italy’ manufacturing and the global importance of the salone del mobile.’

italian prime minister matteo renzi (left) and claudio luti (right), CEO of kartell inside the kartell booth on the fairgrounds in rho

‘this edition was some kind of rehearsal for expo 2015,’ luti concluded. ‘there is everything to suggest that it will be a tremendous event that will show the world just what milan and italy are capable of achieving. we are unfazed by the challenge and are already preparing for a great salone that will get the universal exposition ball rolling.’

‘now, everything is going again, we start to run. don’t forget that in the last few years, all countries, italy too, were in a very strong, structural crisis. and, of course, the factories and everything, were a little bit afraid. that is, the people were afraid, the creativity was stunted, and now, after a few years, we start to run again. but believe me, the last year of the salone del mobile was good enough. as was the year before!

I think, frankly speaking, that a lot of people are trying to suggest to somebody to think, ‘OK, now it’s time for moving to london, or cologne, or kortrijk, or even new york. why is that? for the moment, again, milano is empowering enough. not milano, the italian industries are powerful enough to support milano and to support the salone del mobile,’ states piero lissoni, responding to various journalistic voices, most notably an article (march 2014) written by chiara alessi in ‘il fatto quotidiano’ — the passion of the english press is to discredit.

published only in italian, designboom translates a few statements that appear in the article:

a few weeks before this 2014 salone del mobile, the UK-based marcus fairs, editor-in-chief of one of the most important design blogs – dezeen – began asking some poignant questions on his twitter feed, to the
effect of: ‘how many of you don’t attend salone del mobile?’ / ‘are you among those who will give up on salone del mobile this year?’ or, my favorite, ‘looks like this year at salone del mobile there will be terrible weather and it will always rain’ … what news!

for as long as we can remember it has rained at salone del mobile. in april in milan it rains. what does it matter?  last year, immediately after the event, dezeen published an editorial against milan design week, which gave a strong and uncredited argument: aside from the adverse weather predictions, taxi driver comments were cited, as were the reports of friends of friends of a well-known columnist from a daily british newspaper that they counted the number of homeless people at the duomo – attesting to the level of the italian crisis, or its malfunctioning, the proliferation of events scattered around the city, which in his view made it impossible to orient oneself in milan. a list of comments one might expect from an occasional or inexperienced visitor, but certainly not from an editor who has visited the salone del mobile for years. 

the only pertinent notes of the critique were those revolving around italian companies, which would be reduced to a more homogeneous, less identifiable and less iconic level, having ended up working with almost all of the usual names in contemporary design. it’s a shame that those names are the same that are diligently published and pushed in the columns of his blog.

5 or more articles focused on discrediting the design week, and in that opinionated editorial, other instances were cited, specifically three interviews with the alleged spokesmen of italian-ness: claudio luti of kartell, patrizia moroso of moroso, and joseph grima,  former director of domus magazine. the most self-critical thoughts towards the management of the event, nostalgia for the past, more inquisition on the current scenario were extracted and highlighted from these discussions.

anyone who loves italy and the history of its design suffers from the global economic and cultural environment in which operate curators, companies, designers, but – to say it his way – what about the rest of the world?

(end of translation)
the article ends with: it doesn’t seem that any other design week, company or big design firm of the moment has the potential to become a substitute of that scenario.

the above refers to the article grey skies over grey buildings make for a grey mood, in which dezeen states: ‘to visit milan during the salone is to experience the antithesis of design‘ and ‘london is ten times the size of milan but the london design festival is ten times easier to comprehend‘. london is easy to navigate, maybe, and julie lasky’s new york times article adds ‘london is the design capital of the world’, but her commentary ends with this statement: ‘after 10 years, the london design festival, a 10-day program of some 200 events (editor’s note: compared to the 1000+ exhibitors at the fair and 2000+ off-site events in milan), failed to express the full radiance of contemporary british design…‘

designboom’s comment on all of this, is that we have finally experienced good weather during milan design week 2014.