INVITED DESIGN EDITOR Gisella Borioli
JOURNALIST, ART DIRECTOR, CURATOR, ENTREPRENEUR OF CREATIVITY
THE MEMORY OF THE PAST – THE LOOK INTO THE FUTURE In our such a fluid world, where the sciences, professions and ideas intersect with each other, creating still difficult to formulate and to define new specialties as digitization, robotics, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, dematerialization, advanced technologies and other forms, defined by algorithms, which become the keys to enter the future, where everything mixes and converts.
In the global world we are witnessing the strange phenomenon that at the same time recovers the craftsmanship, the handmade, the traditions, the roots of doing, the old values, the styles of the past and engages them on new technologies in search of sustainability and unexpected and multiple performances. Fashion, design, production speak the same language, align themselves on the same trends, try to catch Generation Z already fully tuned to the digital world. The artisan and the robot are not in competition; they are rather the same part of the e-commerce that makes the stores as on-line platform.
During the latest edition of the Milan Design Week, there was realized one science fiction scenario: while Milan dreams of reopening the Navigli, the historic canals closed ninety years ago, the show director Marco Balich opened for the guests a glass corridor, at the end of which was installed a huge LED screen with projections of the future Milan.
In the old abandoned warehouse in the backyard of the Central Station was located the Ventura Centrale project, where science and design intersected: the movements of light followed the curves of the body, stalactites formed before the eyes, but not ice-made, but from the resin created by a secret formula, light sculptures transformed and interacted with music and other visual effects. At Superstudio Più, an iconic place where in 2000 was launched the Fuorisalone project presented in the main design areas of the city, the Superdesign Show also surprised guests withitsexcitingandspectacularinstallations:from the 14-meter tower of Matteo Thun, immersed in a kaleidoscope of 800 rainbow “Butterflies”, to an amazing dancer by Lexus, accompanied by totems on wheels and an immersive display combining bright and dynamic lighting in which countless rays of light are controlled to interact with the image of a person. The European Community also presented to the guests the international projects combining science, design and fashion: air purifying clothes, body temperature control fabrics, digital screens that give the opportunity to try on any dress, and also various 3D projections from Dassault Systèmes which were presented to the guests the innovations that can affect their lifestyles, movements, energy consumption and breathing.
Even more surprising was the example of the real dematerialization, presented in the form of invisible large sculptures by artist-architect Flavio Lucchini. Thanks to the extraordinary technology Sense sculptures go beyond the augmented reality to the immaterial reality, which is created through the application on a regular smartphone. By pointing the camera at seemingly empty space, you can find eight colored, steel and iron, large figures, like giant toys, which you can go round, zoom in, see in details, take a picture or make a selfie with them and then to share on social networks. To give them the opportunity to exist. However, the sculptures do not actually exist, they will disappear immediately after the turning the application off. They appear due to the existing in reality small models that can turn into unimaginable monuments in the city squares thanks to digital technologies. The next step: to recreate such intangible objects and place them at your own house, and in any other place where you want.
The design world will only benefit from this.
FASHION AND DESIGN: TO EACH HIS OWN WEEK?
Design purists, promoters of Fuorisalone, as a phenomenon of widespread creativity, do not like this. They do not like that fashion, with all its power, has slipped between small and large furniture brands and young designers, removing the space and stealing the attention.
After years of investment and hard work to create an event that involves the whole city and that made Milan the capital of Design of the world, here, among the companies that are the flagships of Italian creativity but with turnover that does not stand the comparison, between the many pioneers and experimenters, among the universities of the world and the young talents who still struggle between insufficient budgets and unattainable locations, appear on the same stage and at the same time the Great Fashion.
They are glorious names, evoking luxury and golden lives: Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Bulgari, in addition to Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Tod’s, Tommy Hilfiger, Blumarine, Paul Smith and many others, not to mention those that are really in the interior, for years and not sporadically, like Missoni and Armani. They all have limitless budgets and ideas, monumental and spectacular projects, fierce and competent, unquestionable appeal. But they take away attention and visitors, from the real reason for being present in this Design Week: talking about habitats, not clothes.