MILANO DESIGN WEEK 2022
The 60th edition of the world’s most important furniture fair will be held this coming June. This year beauty will be seconded by sustainability and wellbeing.

From June 7 to 12, Milan will be the world capital of design, again, with the return of the “physical” edition of the Salone del mobile. The most important event in the furniture industry will celebrate its 60th anniversary at

Fiera Milano Rho, two years after its last in-person edition, with the ambitious objective to show the world that it is indeed possible and necessary to start organising large international on-site events balancing sustainability and environment protection with production criteria.

This edition will also comprise the EuroCucina biennale and its side show FTK (technology For The Kitchen), together with the International Bathroom Fair.After its 2019 debut, we will also see the return of S.Project, the exhibition dedicated to design projects and products.

The Salone will be back with all its might, occupying all of the Fiera’s pavilions for a total exhibition space of over 200.000 square meters and nearly 2.000 exhibitors, of which 600 young design talents and 35 top-tier players. The latter will have their own SaloneSatellite space, located for the first time near the entrance of the exhibition grounds. The layout is entirely new and has been developed around the concept of a traditional “piazza”

The Salone, on its part, will maintain its classic format: physical booths are back, miniature worlds offering visitors inspiring immersive experiences, created by the more than 1.200 participating brands. Over the years, they have come up with several total living solutions in which architectural features blend in with communication and living elements.

“The Salone del Mobile has always been a catalyst of creativity and energy. It generates beauty, inclusion, new opportunities” says Maria Porro, president of the Salone del Mobile Milano. “We’ve always been a place for dialogue and networking, in Milan as well as in the Shanghai and Moscow editions. Today, we are shattered by the war going on in Ukraine, and believe even more in our standing at the crossroads of world cultures and styles.

”But are there any particular markets to which the Salone is paying more attention than in the past? “Il Salone del Mobile. Milano is an international event with a global scope” explains president Porro “to us, every market is
strategic in its own way as we have a multiplicity of brands addressing different markets. Today, it is important to stress the role the Salone is having in the globalisation and internationalisation process. Thanks to the flexibility of its organisation and its capacity to quickly recognise leading trends and innovations, the Salone is a true –pioneer, uncovering new opportunities around the globe.”

PEOPLE AND ENVIRONMENT WELLBEING

Sustainability is the main theme of the 2022 edition of the Salone, which will become the stage for designersand brands to showcase their progress in this field. The young and talented designers from SaloneSatellite will of course, be strongly involved, but the Salone itself will be leading the way and become a driver of change, with a number of concrete actions and initiatives. For instance, practical guidelines were developed top help exhibitors design their booths following sustainability criteria in their choice of materials, but also in the logistics and sourcing processes for components. The guidelines also suggest solutions that help reduce material, water and energy waste. The same criteria are being adopted by the Salone in the design of all the public spaces of the Fiera.

The focus on sustainability continues from last September’s Supersalone and is to become the organisation’s founding approach for the future to enable a real green transition of the industry. A process in which the Salone has an important role to play, as an accelerator of virtuous and ethical processes

“In the near future, exhibitions such as the Salone del Mobile will need to support this new evolution, concentrating, for example, on the environmental footprint of booth construction, transportation and visits: the process will have to be reinvented with sustainability in mind. A sustainable Salone is also a resilient Salone, especially with respect to world crises and emergencies. It is clear that we cannot ignore environmental issues if we want our international events to grow and thrive in the long-term. For the Salone del Mobile this is a must: we have already started such a journey with Supersalone, in which the concepts of recyclability and circular economy stood at the basis of the design of all infrastructures.

For the next edition we are working with Symbola and with all our partner companies to bring the environmental footprint of the event to an absolute minimum. Digital will also become ever more important: promotion and virtual experience will need to combine with the physical space to offer new modes of interaction, networking, experiencing and enjoyment that will support and elevate each other”.

President Porro, what’s your message to the foreign visitors of the Salone del Mobile?
“Come, get involved, enter the booths, and physically touch and interact with the furniture, the accessories, and the design, fill your eyes with beauty and your minds with projects. The Salone is a true treasure vault waiting to be explored, it has so much to give. It is the result of an entire year of hard work, expressed through a five-day event.
That’s a very short time indeed! Missing the event would mean missing an opportunity. Presentations, meetings, relations, business. An opportunity that won’t ever come back with the same strength and under that form. The Salone is ready to start again, opening new possibilities and creating new business. The June edition was created with the precise intent to welcome as many foreign visitors as possible. We can’t wait to welcome you all.”

FTK - TECHNOLOGY FOR THE KITCHEN 2022 The present and future of built-in appliances

Sustainable, smart and environment-conscious technology that is also intuitive and accessible, and that integrates easily in people’s lives to minimise the impact of daily domestic activities on the planet and help improve our lifestyles and wellbeing. All this stands at the heart of FTK (Technology For the Kitchen), EuroCucina’s side event that offers the rare opportunity to delving deep into the world of built-in technology and hoods with innovative products presentations, prototypes and new trends in the art of food preservation and cooking.

Among the going trends emerging from the 39 exhibitors’s propositions, energy savings and a whole new set skills acquired by appliances, such as optimising performance optimisation, enhancing sustainability, AI and seamless integration into the smart home, allowing for appliances of different brand to communicate.

The aesthetic value of products will be equally important: ergonomics, materials, colours, appeal will be indispensable traits of the proposed solutions, that will also aspire to an ever more personalised, and customisable, design.

DESIGN WITH NATURE

The S.Project show, dedicated to interior design projects, will host a large 1,400 square meters installation, Design with Nature, to celebrate the Salone del Mobile.Milano 60th anniversary. Inspired by the theme of nature protection, it was created by architect Mario Cucinella, who has been purporting a circular design vision for years. The installation tells the story of a virtuous ecosystem that, ideally, represents the future of domestic life and envisions three main theories: the absolute urgency of the transition towards sustainability; the home as the first building block of the urban tissue, and cities as mines of opportunity.

60ANNI SALONE

The communication campaign of the Salone del Mobile.Milano 60th edition is the work of award winning Italian illustrator Emiliano Ponzi, in the shape of six posters - one for every decade -. They celebrate the history of the event and tell about its relation to the city and its inhabitants, and also about the evolution of our lifestyle since 1961. There are common elements uniting the six posters, such as the use of a red chromaticity, the Salone’s traditional colour, the number 60, and the presence of Milan’s most iconic landmarks: the Velasca tower, the Duomo, the Scala theatre, the Fiera and Milan’s typical tramway. As an element of modernity, a digital twist was added to the pictures, which become animated when a QR code featuring on the posters is scanned.

Copyright HOMA 2022- Issued By Homa Marketing dept. on June 2022
This article appears in the first issue of DESIGN.MAG (April September 2022).
DESIGN.MAG. is the new Homa house organ that anticipates trends and focuses on global design culture.

For further information, please contact: info@homaeurope.eu