Salone del Mobile 2024

What can we expect at the Salone del Mobile 2024, which will take place for the 62nd time from April 16 to 21 at Milan’s Fiera Milano exhibition center in Rho? Around 1,900 exhibitors, around 30% of whom come from abroad. As every year, the Salone Satellite, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, showcases innovations by very young designers or recent academy graduates.

The world’s largest trade fair event for furniture and design has expanded its spectrum once again and is now more holistic. In addition to product and design innovations, we will be welcomed with sustainable ideas on food and resource consumption or with a think tank. To implement the concept, the Salone del Mobile is focusing on big names, combining this with high-quality design products, new positions from the very young design generation and AI. The program is extensive and visitors should plan accordingly. A look at some of the details.

David Lynch is world-famous as a film director. Very few people know that he is active in almost all areas of art. Lynch is a painter, photographer, designer, lithographer and creates digital worlds. He has designed the Thinking Room for the Salone del Mobile 2024. This is a pavilion built over a circular floor plan on an area of 50 square meters, which leads from the lively trade fair parcours of makeovers and design innovations into a special place, a place that is almost empty. Wrapped in heavy burgundy velvet on the outside, its interior is lined with blue velvet. In the center of the room is a large wooden chair. Maria Porro, President of the Salone del Mobili 2024, explains why this non-commercial concept was chosen: “We decided to work with a master of film like David Lynch because he knows how to transport us into a mysterious, different world. Entering his Thinking Room is a transition into a space that is another world, an inner space. What is design and especially interior design but the search for objects (…) to furnish (…) a space that unconsciously gives us a sense of security?”

Water is one of the most precious resources and is becoming increasingly scarce globally. In order to optimize the water footprint, manufacturers of bathroom furnishings in particular are facing new challenges. With the room-sized installation Under the Surface, Accurat, Design Group Italia, and artist Emiliano Ponzi focus on water as a resource. The installation looks like a large illuminated underwater landscape. In its mounds are small niches in which design products are presented that are intended to optimize water consumption in the future. The exhibitors at the Salone del Mobile 2024 will be exploring key questions: To what extent is the design industry equipped to deal with the issue of resource scarcity in terms of water and what has it already developed as a solution to this problem? How can design contribute to improving the water footprint now and in the future? What tools are available for this? The topic of saving water is the focus of the Salone del Mobile 2024 and the installation Under The surface will find its setting in the bathroom exhibition. Here, around 180 manufacturers will showcase their new products on 18,000 square meters. Function and aesthetics are at the service of the environment, care and wellbeing.

Like water, food is one of the major sustainability issues. Six food magazines will be addressing this topic in the EuroCucina section. As the world’s leading kitchen trade fair and part of the Salone del Mobile 2024, this year it is presenting an exciting project that explores food. Where can food come from, how simple can it be, what is its cultural context and how does it appear on the stage in different regions of the world? Six food magazines are taking part in this event: the new journal Family Style from the USA, L’Integrale from Italy, Linseed Journal from England, the South Korean magazine F, the Austrian The Preserve Journal and Farta from Portugal. They work for the Salone del Mobile at the interface between food and design. A lively event with many live performances on an immersive, changeable stage with tastings, project presentations and ideas for implementation in the respective print medium is the program. The protagonists are chefs, performers, artists and designers – and the visitors are also part of it. The topic of food is elevated to a philosophical level: Does food create identity? How can it be sustainable? What does the future of food look like? The 50 exhibitors at EuroCucina will be at the trade fair with their new products and kitchen concepts to provide practical, supportive ideas.

The major theme of the world of work, artificial intelligence, will feature prominently at the Salone del Mobile 2024. Publicis Groupe, a global communications provider with a focus on growth and transformation in the areas of marketing, communications and digital business development, has developed the “Where Design Envolves” campaign in collaboration with Italian communications designer Paolo Ciuccarelli. Fluid process, open outcome: A dynamic platform used AI-driven processes to evaluate current discourse from the design community and feed it into an ongoing platform, which can then continue to grow in real time at the Salone. This multi-channel communication approach based on creativity and reflection offers a dynamic reservoir of knowledge, experiences and ideas that can be transferred into real time through the perceptions of trade fair participants and visitors to the Salone. In this way, many current perspectives on the Salone del Mobile 2024 and international design become tangible for the public.