icon design talks returns during milan design week 2018

icon design talks returns during milan design week 2018 for a series of special events and lectures taking place at the microsoft house and the cinema anteo. from the 17 to 22 april the event will host architects and designers including: david adjaye, michael anastassiades, atelier biagetti, stefano boeri, andrea boschetti, guido canali, aric chen, stefan dietz, formafantasma, ron gilad, konstantin grcic, giulio iacchetti, hans ulrich obrist, studio swine, patricia urquiola and liu xiaodu who will speak about their practices and recently completed projects. designboom has teamed up with icon design talks for the live coverage of the program and will host its own session on saturday 21 at the microsoft house discussing design and architecture on the web.

icon design talks will start on 17 april with david adjaye at cinema anteo
image © designboom

‘we choose to give a space to all the designers that we featured on the cover this year,’ icon design director michele lupi mentions. ‘usually architecture and design magazines have objects or architectural spaces,’ he continues, ‘but we want talk about the backstage, we are curious about who worked behind the project and this is the idea that drives the icon design talks.’

icon design director michele lupi will moderate and participate in several of the talks
image © designboom

in partnership with edison, the event will take place on the ground floor of the microsoft house and at the cinema anteo and will include a set of different formats, from lectures to Q&A’s and round tables. ‘in this international environment where everybody is trying to build up walls we are trying to destroy them,’ michele lupi notes, ‘we try to talk with architects, with people who work in this environment but also with students and citizens at the same time.’

formafantasma will talk about ‘ore streams’, their latest work featuring recycled electronic waste.
image © delfino legnani sisto

the talks are part of the innovation design district, which lupi describes as, ‘it is becoming bigger and bigger, its really interesting to see how the city is growing, the new part of milan, as tourists or people that come from abroad are always coming in this area to see what it is like.’

studio swine will discuss ‘how do we retain a sense of regional identity in a globalising world?’
image © icon design, barrie hullegie