At 27 via Tortona the “Temporary Museum for New Design” has just opened its doors with a project curated by Gisella Borioli with the art direction of Giulio Cappellini. More than 30 international design brands share the space that has been conceived and distributed as if it was a real museum. Avant-garde design invades the galleries allocated at Superstudio Più main building in an attempt to disseminate the latest trends under the leitmotiv “less fair and more museum”.

Right after we pass the front gate we are welcomed by a very particular garden populated by the new creations of Finnish label Punkalive. Curved wood works, as once studied by master Alvaar Alto, this time interpreted by the “crème” of contemporary designers. Chairs, tables, wardrobes or shelves signed by Karim Rashid or Jukka T. Tapio among others.

As we continue towards the entrance to the building we get temporarily distracted by a wall/mural composed by multi-shaped/colored concrete blocks that belong to Magnetti’s new series. The composition, that reminds of a large scale pixel image overlooking the main façade, proofs that there is nothing boring about this well-known and widely used material.

 

Once inside the “museum”, the lack of natural light is balanced by the beauty of the illuminant sources proposed this year. Metamorphosis is the project by Vicente García Jimenez for Foscarini, a perfect choreography of light where the shadows of the sculptures formed by groups of “lanterns” dance to the music of Francesco Morosini.

Bysteel presents “the war of the (design) worlds”: illuminant elements conceived for exteriors but perfectly suited for interiors (generous in space). Aluminum and steel sheets cut and shaped to become the structure of these beautiful objects. Molo continues its research for applying paper to a flexible but lasting design. They show once again their never-ending sinuous cardboard benches while they surprise us by using the same material in the shape of lamps that should become the clouds for the sky of our homes.

The Sweedish have not missed their annual appointment, this time represented with the project curated by Caroline Heiroth “Swedish Love Stories 2011”. One more time Scandinavian designs proves fresh, with prototype looking objects that use almost raw materials and are geographically distributed in this particular topographic map.

And thus, between intriguing shapes and un-classified materials, we hear the pistol shot that marks the beginning of the most interesting week for the city of Milan and probably the world’s most important design appointment.

Online registration for Temporary Museum for New Design

More Info at: Superstudio Group

 

Text by Alfonso Martínez Vega

All Photos by Stefano Libertini Protopapa