In 2021, the world’s most important furniture and design trade fair took place as a “Supersalone” with a new concept and significantly slimmed down. Find out what the Milan Salone del Mobile 2022 has to offer here. Editor-in-chief Fabian Peters is on site for us.

In 2021, the world’s most important furniture and design trade fair took place as a “Supersalone” with a new concept and significantly slimmed down. Find out what the Milan Salone del Mobile 2022 has to offer here. Editor-in-chief Fabian Peters is on site for us.

Salone impressions 1: Zen in the bathroom

Sebastian Herkner has designed the “Zencha” ceramic series for Duravit. We met him for an interview.

The list of things that Sebastian Herkner has not yet designed is getting shorter and shorter. Now the busy designer from Offenbach can tick off another area of activity: he and his team have designed the “Zencha” sanitary ceramics series for Duravit. Herkner’s bathtubs, washbasins and mirrors are based on the basic shape of a square with rounded corners. The bath and washbasin curve gently above the floor and end at the top with a slightly flared edge.

Herkner’s design was inspired by vessels from Japanese tea culture. They are modeled on tea bowls, the shapes of which the designer translates into sanitary ceramics. Tubs and basins are available in a total of four colors. Sebastian Herkner has also designed matching bathroom furniture, whose simple shapes reveal a relationship to Japanese carpentry. In an interview, he revealed to us the designer’s intentions with his design.

Salone impressions 2: Pritzker Prize winners at work

Three winners of the Pritzker Architecture Prize are showing their design work in Milan. And twice the designs for a Serpentine Pavilion were created.

The “Peter Zumthor Collection”

Peter Zumthor has also repeatedly designed furniture for his buildings. However, as they were never produced in series, these furnishings are largely unknown. The fact that the Japanese label “Time & Style” is now launching an entire “Peter Zumthor Collection” on the market is therefore attracting a great deal of attention, even in Milan. According to the brand, they have reconstructed furniture designs from Zumthor’s work over the last 50 years and are now producing them using Japanese craftsmanship. This is something of an exaggeration, as the oldest design dates back to 1996 and is a beautiful lounger, available in several versions, which the Pritzker Prize winner created for his famous thermal baths in Vals. The design is characterized by the delicate curve of the wooden slats from which the lounger surface is made. The lounger is undoubtedly the highlight of the collection. Time & Style has also produced various small pieces of furniture – stools and side tables that were created for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2011, small wooden tables from the Kolumba Museum, a so-called “ladies’ stool” that Zumthor created for his new office building in 2005. He also designed another large piece of furniture for his studio – a simple wooden work table with sturdy round legs.

Office furniture series “Principles” by OMA for UniFor

Office furniture manufacturer UniFor is presenting the “Principles” office furnishing series designed by OMA for the first time in Milan. Like the Zumthor designs, it is also a “waste product” from an architectural project – in this case the new office building of the Axel Springer publishing house in Berlin, which was occupied the year before last. The enormous building, with its several thousand workstations, radically redefines the “open office” theme by placing the employees in a huge terraced landscape. Because the building is used by the group’s various brands, the workspaces had to be completely changeable. OMA developed furniture that plays with circular elements and can be used to create a variety of scenarios with the help of a wide range of add-on elements. These include lounge situations as well as acoustically shielded workstations and more or less informal meeting places. OMA contrasts the reduced formal vocabulary with a calm but multi-tonal color scheme. Incidentally, Principles is presented in and in front of the highly acclaimed Feltrinelli Foundation building by Herzog & de Meuron.

Herzog & de Meuron at ClassiCon and Artemide

The Basel-based architecture firm is also represented in Milan with new product designs, although these will not be shown at the Fuorisalone in the city, but on the exhibition grounds themselves. The small cork piece of furniture “Corker” will be presented by the Munich label ClassiCon. The design, which can be used as a table or stool, is reminiscent of a mushroom or a champagne cork and is available in three different sizes. It also originates from a project, namely the Serpentine Pavilion, which Herzog & de Meuron built together with Ai Weiwei in 2012. For Artemide, which was one of the few lighting manufacturers present at the trade fair itself (Euroluce, which is integrated into the Salone, will not take place again until 2023), the Swiss company expanded its “Unterlinden” range. Also new is the monumental “El Porís” chandelier. Otherwise, the Bjarke Ingels Group set the tone at Artemide. BIG is now something like the Italian manufacturer’s in-house designer. The designs by the team led by BIG partner Jakob Lange range from the delicate “Vine Light” reading lamp to the expansive “Line Chandelier” chandelier

Salone impressions 3: The old masters

Traditionally, a look at design history is also taken at Salone times in Milan.

Aldo Rossi. Design 1960-1997

While last year’s exhibition at the Museo MAXXI focused mainly on Aldo Rossi’s architectural work, the Museo del Novecento is now looking at Aldo Rossi as a designer. The not particularly large but elaborately designed show demonstrates the close links between Rossi’s designs and his architecture in many different ways. Many of his product designs appear to be scaled-down architectures. A whole series of his buildings – the famous Teatro del Mondo springs to mind – can also be imagined in miniature. Again and again, the two creative fields intersect. A series of woven carpets from the 1980s, for example, becomes an exhibition of Rossi’s work by translating his architectural drawings into ornament. The exhibition in Milan also sheds light on the historical influences on Aldo Rossi’s design – from the Shakers to Pittura Metafisica. At the end of the hall, the show changes perspective once again in the so-called “biografia domestica”: the installation, which presents a capriccio of Rossi’s living and working spaces, shows the architect not as a design creator, but as a design user.

Aldo Rossi. Design 1960-1997
Museo del Novecento
Piazza del Duomo 8
20123 Milan
until October 2, 2022
www.museodelnovecento.org

Ettore Sottsass’ Casa Lana

Not an exhibition but a new permanent installation has opened the Milan Triennale for the Salone 2022. The core area of the “Casa Lana” has been reconstructed in the Sala Sottsass. Ettore Sottsass built the house in the mid-1960s for his friend, the printer and lithographer Giovanni Lana, with whom he also collaborated on several occasions. The concept of the living and working area, which was rebuilt in the rooms of the Triennale, is that of a room within a room. Sottsass placed a wooden box in the stone enclosing walls, which he used to define living and working zones as well as the dining area, hallway and checkroom. The center of the design is an alcove-like niche that encloses sofas and shelves. It is a small Gesamtkunstwerk that was rebuilt in the Triennale. The influences that Sottsass reveals here range from Art Nouveau to Orientalism. However, Casa Lana also proves that the architect Ettore Sottsass – in contrast to the designer Ettore Sottsass – is still too little recognized.

The bedroom of Eileen Gray’s Villa E.1027

The Munich furniture brand ClassiCon has been producing the furniture designs of Irish designer and architect Eileen Gray (1878-1976) for a long time. Many of them were created for her vacation home E.1027, which she built on the Côte d’Azur between 1926 and 1929. The building, which has just been completely restored (link), is one of the most important designs of pre-war modernism in France. Now a team of researchers led by Wilfried Wang, Peter Adam and Carolina Leite has attempted to reconstruct the pioneering interior design of Villa E.1027 down to the last detail. One result is a 1:1 model, which was exhibited in the ClassiCon showroom on the Fuorisalone during the Salone del Mobile. This is a replica of Gray’s multifunctional furniture with its sophisticated mechanisms. The researchers have now been able to reconstruct many of the functions using sources. The reconstruction of the ingenious constructions underlines Gray’s exceptional position in the architecture and design of early modernism.

Biennale impressions 4: Konstantin Grcic

Konstantin Grcic presents himself at the Salone del Mobile 2022 in many facets.

“Aka” for Magis

Konstantin Grcic, probably the most important German designer of the last two decades, recently presented an overview of his work in the “Haus am Waldsee” museum. Grcic, who has been living in the capital for several years, had placed his designs in new contexts, staging them as a kind of “over-design”. At the Salone del Mobile 2022, Grcic presented two new designs that continue his collaboration with his long-standing partners Magis and Plank.

For Magis, Grcic developed “Aka”, a three-legged chair made of bent plywood. Three interconnected wooden tongues form the backrest, seat and legs. With Aka, Grcic has found his very own approach to the already well-defined type of plywood chair. Magis offers the design in three colors – wood tone, petrol green and black.

“Bench” for Plank

The South Tyrolean furniture manufacturer Plank presented the “Bench” series at the trade fair, which, contrary to what the name suggests, consists not only of a bench but also a table, which is available in four different versions. Bench and table consist of solid wooden panels of the same thickness, which are invisibly joined together. Bench’s real innovation lies in this plug-in system, which allows the three components of the bench and table to be taken apart and assembled without the use of tools. The four versions of the table differ in the position and width of the two sides. They can sit flush with the ends of the table top or be indented on one or both sides.

Stand design for Mattiazzi

However, the most remarkable work that Grcic is showing at the Salone del Mobile is not furniture, but his design for the exhibition stand of Italian furniture manufacturer Mattiazzi. Since this year, Grcic has taken on the role of art director for the label. While elsewhere in the exhibition halls the pompous staging is celebrating its premiere after the forced break and the restrictions of the Supersalone 2021, Grcic achieves an effect with the most economical means. The frame is formed by a wall construction made of simple, unpainted plywood frames. They bear large-format images by photographer Florian Böhn, which show views of the Mattiazzi factory halls on the back of the stand. This gives the stand a surprising visual expanse. By contrast, architectural impressions are displayed on panels that partially shield the stand from the adjoining aisle and are intended to take away the object-like quality of the furniture standing on simple pedestals in front of it. The few materials on the stand can easily be fed back into the material cycle. Or, as in the case of the large wooden cabinets, which also serve as room dividers, they can simply be placed elsewhere.

“Palatin” for Kettal

Perhaps the most unusual Grcic design at the trade fair is the “Palatin” parasol, which the designer developed for Kettal. The parasol has a square base and is spanned by four arms. Grcic has cut a small skylight into the fabric where the pole pierces the top of the parasol, providing light and air circulation.

“Wall” and “Daybed” for Giustini/Stagetti

Grcic designed the two pieces of art furniture “Wall” and “Daybed” for the Roman gallery Giustini/Stagetti, for whom he already created the Magliana project in 2017. Whereas five years ago the focus was on concrete, the two new designs are works in wood. Daybed is an upholstered lounger surrounded on two sides by half-height wooden walls. It stands on a wooden surface that delimits a fragmentary space on a third side. With this object, Grcic is further developing ideas that he had already hinted at in 2016 with the “Hieronimus” series of seating cells. The wall unit “Wall”, on the other hand, is a symbolic piece of shelving furniture, the division of which confronts the viewer with the question of whether the differently shaped shelves actually have a purpose. One tends to assume that all the supposed shelves and storage options do not in fact represent an abstract and functionless relief. The wall simulates usefulness, like an SUV simulates off-road capability or a fashion sneaker simulates athleticism.

After the Milan Salone del Mobile was canceled in April 2020 due to the pandemic, the world’s most important furniture and design trade fair took place in September 2021 – slimmed down as a “Supersalone”. Find out what the Salone del Mobile 2021 concept had to offer here: Salone del Mobile 2021. What innovations were there? Find out here: Supersalone 2021. The “Fuori Salone”, the Salone outside the Salone del Mobile, was more important than ever last year. Find out what there was to discover outside the exhibition halls here: Fuori Salone 2021.