yesmilano inaugurates milano home of design campaign for design week 2024

Yesmilano’s milano home of design 2024 campaign

City Deputy for Employment and Economic Development Alessia Cappello presented Milano Home of Design, the official campaign of Milano Design Week 2024, in a conference at Palazzo Giureconsulti, the headquarters of YesMilano. During the event, the Municipality of Milano and YesMilano unveiled the over 1,300 exhibitions, presentations, events, and installations that are free for public visits and will take place between April 15th and 21st, 2024 in 18 different neighborhoods, from Brera, 5Vie, Durini to Isola, Statale, Tortona, and more.

Porta Venezia Rainbow District and Monumentale-Chinatown, home of the ADI Design Museum, join the ensemble as the new neighborhoods for the public to explore, with the latter presenting a new itinerary along Via Sarpi extending to the Chinese Cultural Center. Design events and installations are everywhere this year, including in Castello Sforzesco, the Porta Romana District, the Central Station, the San Vittore Prison, the Fashion District, the Bocconi Campus, the streets around the Navigli Canals, as well as the peripheral districts of Nolo, Crescenzago and Barona with projects highlighting craftsmanship, artisanal talent, and circular economy.

In an interview with designboom, YesMilano’s Director General, Fiorenza Lipparini, says that Milano is ready to greet the world for Milano Design Week 2024. ‘We want that those who arrive here to discover the city during Design Week are able to feel welcome and at home in a city that presents to the world a clear and authentic collective identity, the Milano made and remade by those who live, work, create, study, and do research here. It is an identity and a culture that those who animate the city during Milano Design Week also become part of,’ she tells designboom.

YesMilano, Milano Home of Design, Teatro Continuo Burri, Parco Sempione | photos by Valerio Nico | images courtesy of YesMilano

Valerio Nico’s 5 hypermodern images for milano design week 2024

As soon as the visitors of Milano Design Week 2024 step inside the city, they are greeted with 5 hypermodern images of the YesMilano’s campaign featuring 45 designers, architects, chefs, researchers, art curators, and students who contribute to renewing Milano’s reputation as the international home of design. These photographs cover the walls and screen of the city as part of YesMilano’s city-wide Milano Home of Design campaign and the image works of Valerio Nico who, as Fiorenza Lipparini shares with designboom, a now Milan-based photographer who is not even thirty years old but has worked all over the world.

‘The Milano Home of Design 2024 campaign wants to celebrate the unique vocation of Milano as both a business and leisure destination: a city where the most important global exhibition dedicated to the world of Design – the Salone – becomes an engine of growth and experimentation for the city’s broader ecosystem – from universities and research institutions, to local businesses and civic society organizations -, embedding the public-private-partnership approach which ensures the longstanding success of the city as a destination, be it for a week or for a lifetime, for a visit or for setting-up a start-up, to organize a unique event or to expand operations in Europe,’ Fiorenza Lipparini explains to designboom.

YesMilano, Milano Home of Design, Edificio Trifoglio, Politecnico di Milano

repurposing abandoned and disused municipal spaces

Milano Design Week 2024 is repurposing abandoned buildings and disused municipal establishments. They are transformed into spaces for projects and installations. The city administration asked design operators to bring these buildings back to life, as commissioned by the Municipality, Milano Triennale, ADI Design Museum, and the Polytechnic of Milano, including the former Casa dell’Acqua of Via Giacosa, a 1920s building inside Parco Trotter.

Here, they can see an immersive and sensorial installation on the theme of water while being inside the storied halls of the liberty architecture. They’re also invited to visit the abandoned retail spaces in Cimiano and Niguarda, owned by the Municipality of these areas, which host exhibitions spotlighting young designers. At the end of Milano Design Week 2024, these spaces will be put up for tender to host proximity shops serving the neighborhood.

YesMilano, Milano Home of Design, Torre Velasca

Where the young designers and talents at

Speaking of young designers, YesMilano’s numbers indicate that 54 percent of the projects in Milano Design Week 2024 are aimed at young creatives working in design. The Municipality hopes this can encourage them to participate in the next Milano Design Weeks, a platform to showcase their talents and products. When visitors pop by the Design Variation by Mosca Partner, the happenings in Via Tortona, including Superstudio, Tortona Rocks and Tortona Area Lab, and the events of Porta Venezia Design District and the Isola Design Festival, they can see, meet and greet these young designers and learn more about their products aimed at contributing to circularity, innovation, and inclusion.

Students and young talents are also a part of Milano Design Week 2024, starting with We Will Designa at Base Milano, organized in collaboration with Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art in London. Still inside Base Milano, an installation dedicated to conviviality is planted on its rooftop, the temporary home of 20 showcasing designers. IED is also in collaboration with the city administration and Milanosport for The Glitch Camp, an urban campsite set up at the Savorelli Sports Center. Here, students and designers under 30 can enter and use the campsite for free during Milano Design Week 2024.

YesMilano, Milano Home of Design, Campus Bocconi SANAA

Environmental and social sustainability and inclusion in design

The Municipality of Milano integrates environmental and social sustainability and inclusion with design and art. Around 60 percent of the design projects this year focus on circular solutions by reusing previously employed installation materials, and 33 percent of the events and installations this year are ready for full accessibility to people with sensory and motor disabilities. Take Città Miniera (Mining the City) where Mario Cucinella repurposes discarded wooden fruit crates to reproduce a city landscape installation. It is set within the historic courtyard of Solferino 28, which is the same building hosting the offices of Milan and Italy’s main daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera.

In Piazza San Fedele, designer Nicoletta Gatti collaborated with 10 international designers to convert 10 felled trees from the storm that occurred in July 2023 into totemic sculptures for ‘Second Life.’ At the end of the exhibit, the artworks will be transferred to the ADI Design Museum and be auctioned to raise money to plant new trees across Milano. These project also arose after the Municipality asked operators to emphasize the participation of young designers, the use of circular and sustainable solutions to create, reuse, and recycle, the maximum inclusiveness and access for people with sensory and motor disabilities, and the solutions to minimize the use of private cars and maximize the use of public transportation, cycling, and shared mobility during Milano Design Week 2024.

YesMilano, Milano Home of Design, Monumento a Sandro Pertini

rediscovering the historic buildings at milan design week 2024

Milano Design Week 2024 also sets the stage for rediscovering the historic buildings of the city, reintroducing them as a design-themed locations, from Palazzo Litta, which is expected to host some exhibits of the 5Vie Design District, to Palazzo Bovara and Palazzo Castiglioni, which are to become the stage of Material Home and L’Appartamento Spagnolo by Elle Decor. The former Seminary of the Archbishopric, now the luxurious hotel Portrait Milano, is expected to host AudiHouse of Progress, while GAM, the Milano Gallery of Modern Art, is where Hearst’s House of the Architect is. Palazzo Giureconsulti is the home of Masterly, the Dutch in Milano, while the Sala dei Pilastri (Hall of Pillars) of Castello Sforzesco opens its gates to Starck’s installation, Transitions.

Milano may also be known as a fashion capital, and this recognition is a continuous filament threading Milano Design Week 2024. Carlo Valsecchi’s photographs document twenty years of the ACPV architectural studio and its founders, Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel grace Palazzo Morando, the city museum for the history of fashion, while Villa Mozart is open for those who want to see the exhibit Doppia Firma by the Cologni Foundation. Home collections by fashion brands reign during the design week too, promoted by the Italian Chamber of Fashion for its Milano Moda Design program. On this list, Bottega Veneta and Ralph Lauren showcase their visual installations, while Zegna redesigns the city newsstands and its showroom in Via Montenapoleone, the heart of the Fashion Quadrangle.

Milano is the home of design, fashion, media and more

Based on the Municipality’s numbers, there are a total of 1,326 events and 182 initiatives that are set to open to the public during Milano Design Week 2024, an increase of 10.5 percent and 3.4 percent respectively compared to 2023. Like every year, the Municipality selected these projects and cultural initiatives for the official program of the Milano Design Week through a public competition. The organizing team hopes that the curated list can express Milano in all of its domains, encompassing fashion, design, media and beyond.

YesMilano’s Fiorenza Lipparini tells designboom that the Milano Home of Design 2024 campaign has come to characterize the city and its international positioning as a business destination for a trip, a conference, a work experience, the start-up of a business, depends on the culture of design and style permeating the city. ‘So, let’s be ready for a week of exhibitions and installations, vernissages and workshops with designers and architects, extraordinary openings and presentations of new design creations pervading the streets, secret courtyards, industrial and historic buildings of Milano, redesigning entire neighborhoods to change the face of the city,’ she says.