Adaptism
"Tapestry 270"

Designers: Paul Youenn, Eliott Vallin
Collaborators and other credits: Textiel Lab / Textiel Museum Tilburg
IG: @adaptism_space

Tapestry 270 is an investigation into the transition between the indoors and outdoors.
Through delving into the heritage of tapestries we found out their importance to warm-up, protect spaces and tell stories. By taking a microscopic view of the fibre we were able to understand its structure and enhance its protective aspect. We wanted to tell the story of the material by showing where its characteristics come from, and how the tapestry can protect the interior space of the house, as well as, in the form of a garment protect the body.

To embody the transition of the Tapestry from an indoor piece towards an outdoor garment we selected the Merino Wool. The white shapes seen are the patterns of the garments created, and the rest for the interior space, through this process nothing is going to waste.

Agglomerati
"MASS"

Designer: Fred Ganim
Collaborators and other credits: Exhibition Curator: Greta Voeller / Video Installation: Coco &Maximilian
Website: www.agglomerati.com

AGGLOMERATI is a London based studio creating distinctive stone furniture rooted in simplicity, functionality and longevity.
Alongside its collections the studio connects multidisciplinary designers with Northern Italy’s foremost craftspeople to bring fresh new perspectives to a time-honoured material. For their first exhibition, Agglomerati collaborates with Australian furniture-maker Fred Ganim.

Upon its extraction from the earth, marble is cut into large cubic volumes. Titled MASS, Ganims’ collection explores the reduction of these volumes, subverting the material’s inherent behaviours. MASS is a series of modular pieces constructed around a central radius and is both elegant and elemental in design. The collection is produced in Palissandro marble, sourced in one of northern Italy’s foremost quarries, located near Bergamo.
Together with MASS, Agglomerati presents a new version of the iconic Round Table created in 2015 by Fred Ganim. This limited-edition piece is carved from a single block of Brazilian Quartzite.

Alyssa Lewis / Marcela Trejo
"Peel Vase Collection"

Designers: Alyssa Lewis / Marcela Trejo
Collaborators and other credits: Exhibition Curator: Greta Voeller / Video Installation: Coco &Maximilian
IG: @alyssa.marcela

The Peel Vase Collection is a three part vase collection by Alyssa Lewis and Marcela Trejo. It explores the aesthetic and functional aspects of a vase and the framing of the flora within.
The vase collection is composed of cylinder vases at varying heights that can be surrounded by any of the three sculptural “peel” forms. Together they are made of aluminum in three different finishes and can be combined in multiple configurations of texture, tone, and shape. The collection references the structure of the stem of the flora it holds, where cylindrical forms and a secondary skin simultaneously separate and connect.
The Peel Vase Collection speaks to the overlapping views of two individual designers, the contrast betwe-en human and nature where hard uniform structures frame soft unfolding organisms, and the embrace of nature celebrating its enigmatic beauty.
Alyssa and Marcela are based in Vancouver, Canada.

Andrea Maestri
"Tuttifrutti"

Designer: Andrea Maestri
Website: www.andreamaestri.com

“Tuttifrutti” is a collection of bizarre characters and animals, a surprising mix of dreamlike creatures that define an extended family full of joy and fun.
Each element has its own strong personality and blurs the line between design and art.
The first part consists of tall vases inspired by the impressive aesthetics of tribal cultures, the fascination for primitive language is expressed through the use of bright colors combined with simple geometric figures; each character represents an archetypal human presence, like a mask acting on the domestic stage.
The second group is formed by some multipurpose containers transformed into strange creatures with iconic features; starting from the memory of an old fashioned toy, they become odd sculptures characterized by oversized anatomical details that emphasize proportions and shapes of the human body.
Lastly, a flock of three tropical birds with large beaks and gradient colors similar to candies or lollipops; once again a childhood remembrance of soft and reassuring shapes, silent and curious presences that observe the viewer and make the home environment more unusual.
The collection is a limited edition, it’s realized in handmade ceramic by the most exquisite italian manufacturers and decorators, further enriched with details in precious metals.

Andrey Budko
"Hear My Roooar"

Designer: Andrey Budko
Website: www.andreybudko.com

Hear My Roooar is a collection of rugs made of wool felt with high-tech embroidery. This is a research of the evolution of technologies and cultural heritage in the modern world. My product is result of a studying traditional crafts and social mythology.
This rugs collection is dedicated to the three very popular modern patterns: leopard print, tattoos, and military camouflage. These patterns are mythologized. Each of them seems to give the owner some new abilities or properties that were not there before. You put it on and you add attraction, freedom or courage.
Embroidery is a craft, which was a part of Russian traditional costumes and daily household items. Wool felt as a material that is best known for the traditional Russian winter boots “valenki”, which today look more like souvenir rather than practical shoe. The main idea is to find new life for technologies and mate-rials, using what digital age has to offer and making it practical again.
The basis of the rugs (carpets) is a high quality non-woven fabric made of 100% wool. The pattern on the rug is embroidered with ceramic thread. Depending on the design, each rug has between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 embroidery stitches.

CARWAN Gallery
"Faux Species"

Designer: Hot Wire Extensions
Website: www.carwangallery.com

Hendry‘s new series 'Faux Species‘ commissioned by Carwan Gallery goes back to Hot Wire Extension‘s core inspiration - the natural world. The series exploits the forms created by vines as they grow, wrap and intertwine in nature. By mimicking our often overlooked natural habitat, evolving and often fragile moments are captured in permanent objects. The 'Faux Species‘ explores the balance between man and nature-made, blurring the boundaries between the two to create objects that are both technological and natural.
Hot Wire Extensions is a young sustainable design office led by Swiss designer and material researcher Fabio Hendry, specialised in fostering material innovation and experimental engineering. Their unique and innovative manufacturing process was developed as a response to the ever changing material landscapes, critically analysing and questioning the consequences of technical innovation. Using waste nylon powder from SLS 3D printing, a material that is currently not recycled, a nichrome wire is shaped and placed within a container and then filled with the nylon powder and various types of sand. An electric current is sent through the wire, generating heat and causing the mixture to solidify around the wire, leading to endless possibilities in shape, scale and application.

CIAM / Laila Gohar
"CIAM HumUs-Fluid Ground"

Designer: Fabrizio Milesi
Collaborators and other credits: Matteo Brioni, Laila Gohar, Casa Bosques
Website: www.ciamweb.it
www.matteobrioni.com
www.lailagohar.com

Earth as nourishment, mother and origin of life. Earth as an element of transformation and evolution, which from fertile dust creates fluid and living forms. Earth as cocoa that changes into chocolate. Earth as material that generates new visions.
HumUs - Fluid Ground is the new concept that CIAM brings to Milano Design Week 2021: a further step in the material research and in the relationship that the brand builds between the elements that populate the projects in which it plays a leading role. Even the roles that the products take on within the space in which they are placed become more fluid and contaminated, transforming themselves into hybrid forms that redefine sensory relations and ways of interacting.
From September 4 to 12, on the occasion of Fuorisalone 2021, the iconic and decadent location of via Simone Saint Bon 1, Milan becomes the scene of the exhibition event in which CIAM presents TABLE, designed by Fabrizio Milesi. The revolutionary table made with the fascinating finishes of Matteo Brioni’s earths collects and changes the relationship between counter, professional and customer, proposing itself as a fluid ground of discovery and experimentation. To emphasize the link between nature, food and design, the visual strength of Laila Gohar’s food art that penetrates in this exhibition space contributing to define for the observer/visitor a unique and sensorial experience.

On the occasion of CIAM's installation at Alcova 2021, Laila Cooks in collaboration with Casa Bosques presents Fragments from history, a multi- sensory experience which celebrates the marriage of high-quality food and craftsmanship.

DDAA LAB
"Belt Furniture"

Designers: Daisuke Motogi / DDAA LAB
Website: www.dskmtg.com

The furniture secured only by lashing belts.

Duccio Maria Gambi / Sasha Ribera, Daniele Giannetti
"FIREZNE // Aria di cantiere"

Designers: Duccio Maria Gambi / Sasha Ribera, Daniele Giannetti
Sponsors: Manifattura Tabacchi
Website: www.ducciomariagambi.com

L7 _ A focus on two emerging Florentine designers curated by Duccio Maria Gambi _ The L7 area will host the introduction of two emerging designers from Florence, an exhibition curated by Duccio Maria Gambi. This is the first result and output of the kind of exchange and synergy which going on in Manifattura Tabacchi, the former tobacco manufacture of Florence. This huge area is going through a respectful but important renovation that’s bringing life back in this 120.000 sqm and setting up a focal point for the Florentine art, design, and fashion life. A focal and meeting point that the city lacked and that will permit the dispersed energy of the city to be concentrated and expanded. It’s in this context that Duccio had the possibility to get in touch with Sasha’s work and approach, and from this with Daniele’s one. Ribera and Giannetti will present their first collections. Both of them, with different materials and languages bu linked by the same hands-on approach and manual experimentation, get to produce a body of works which come to the foreground and solate themselves through their strong identi-ty. The memory of the hand and of the material are still visible but the use of color confuse the perception of their real nature and elevate them to an abstract and contemporary dimension.

A9 _ Aria di cantiere is a group of works that stands in between installation, outdoor furniture, micro archi-tecture and big size sculpture. The spatial research and the functional investigation are activated through a serie of und fined shapes that ask to be undisclosed in their use. Their referring universe is the building site space, in their fence and delimitating elements, rough wooden boards which find in the color a tool to elevate themselves and expand their poor and functional character. 3-4 works in different scales will each define a relation between the inside and the outside, between the person and the environment through the positions and points of view that they will create. The building site it’s also referred through the use of recovered materials from the huge renovation project of Manifattura Tabacchi in Florence, where Duccio has his studio.

Emanuela Petrucci
"Roma"

Designer: Emanuela Petrucci
Sponsor: Travertino Fratelli Pacifici
Website: www.emanuelapetrucci.it

ROMA is a travertine coffee table that is designed to honor the city of Rome to which is explicitly inspired by the use of an eternally classic material, such as the city.

The idea is to make an environmentally friendly and different use of the travertine by means of an interlocking assembly of the three pieces which, by gravity, forms this furniture.
In fact, there is no need for glues or chemicals for the assembly.

Created in cooperation with the craftsmen of an historic quarry of Tivoli, the Travertino Fratelli Pacifici, the product is noted by a contemporary form and by the assembly method which, coupled with the sacrality of an eternal material, gives the appearance of a totemic element to the table.

Federico Floriani
"Joyboy"

Designer: Federico Floriani
IG: @florianifederico

Joyboy is a collection of unique crooked pieces that make up a
wandering living room.

Gilde Editions
"Gilda Editions"

Designers: Jamie Wolfond, Marco Campardo, Michael Schoner, Norma Studio, Rio Kobayashi, Sammi Cherryman, Theodora Alfredsdottir, Tiago Almeida
Website: www.gildaeditions.com

Gilda Editions is an artisan workshop whose purpose is to create experimental objects with the utmost freedom of expression.
Independent from market trends and industry logic, the projects focus their attention on specific processes. Each project is the result of a collaboration between an international designer and the Italian workshop.
Taking its name from the Italian word for ‘guild’, Gilda Editions is a small workshop based in Italy with a global spirit. In a synergistic collaboration between designer and craftsman, the products will be a result of traditional techniques combined with modern technology, where material is transformed, worked and interpreted according to various processes.
Gilda Editions is an Italian company that produces exclusive objects in wood, glass, metal, stone and leather. All objects are made on demand and will be available for purchase at gildaeditions.com .

Gwendoline Porte design
"RAILS"

Designer: Gwendoline Porte
Website: www.gwendolineporte.design

RAILS is a unique concept that bridges the gap between functional design and art. The idea was born in 2015, when Gwendoline Porte began working on a fictive redesign of Fulham Broadway Station’s ticket hall during her studies at UAL, London. The idea of ‘journeying’ became both literal and metaphorical as she noted how the ergonomic shape of a railway track could be transposed to fulfil both a functional and ae-sthetic role in a variety of settings and formulations. The hybrid sculpture-furniture piece that she began to conceptualise became a symbol of life’s journey, encompassing the hopes, dreams and ambitions that each of us will invariably foster.

As her ideas crystallised, Porte focused her attention on how to create a new kind of seat. The motif for that design gradually developed into a capsule collection that now includes tiles and lighting. Her aim was to try an entirely different approach to furniture design - one that highlighted the concept of life’s fluidity; something that appealed to the nomadic nature of humanity while creating a sense of inter-connected-ness. What emerged is a series of pieces that allows its collector-users to move, transform, create and recycle ad libitum.

HEAD – Genève, Geneva University of Art and Design
"HERBARIUM OF INTERIORS . CASE STUDY #2 . THE MILK BAR"

Curated by India Mahdavi, Coordinated by Youri Kravtchenko and Javier Fernandez Contreras

Collaborators and other credits: Assistants: Manon Portera, Alice Proux / MAIA students: Blanca Algarra Sánchez, Kishan Asensio, Elsa Audouin, Sarah Bentivegna, Dany-Sarah Champion, Nina D’Elia, Robin Delerce, Azadeh Djavanrouh, Marina Ezerskaia, Lolita Gomez, Camila González Tapia, Elizaveta Krikun, Thibault Krauer, Nourbonou Missidenti, Filza Parmar, Patrycja Pawlik, Karen Pisoni, Louise Plassard, Léa Rime, Patris Sallaku, Marion Vergne, Nobuyoshi Yokota

Website: www.head-geneve.ch

A herbarium is a collection of specimens. A specimen can be multi-format and lies somewhere between object, image and 1:1 model. When collected, it tends to become its own image.
Similarly, when catalogued and collected, contemporary interiors can be perceived as objects or images. Like herbarium specimens, interiors’ images can oscillate between fiction and representation.
For two years MAIA (Master of Arts in Interior Architecture) students have been developing their own Her-barium of Interiors, revisiting several iconic interiors under the curatorship of India Mahdavi.
Case study #2 is the Milk Bar inspired by the iconic Korova Milk Bar from Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. Although the original space existed only as fiction, Kubrick’s cult film made the Korova Bar a place in its own right, to such an extent that it has been recreated in many cities around the world. Exploring the role of image culture in the construction of contemporary interiors, the project aims to redefine the boundaries of interior architecture and envision a new reality that bypasses traditional distin-ctions such as interior/exterior, public/private, original/copy or real/imaginary, with the aim of definitively confirming the role of interiors in the construction of contemporaneity.

Ignacio Subías Albert
"Artificial Wasteland"

Website: www.ignaciosubias.com

Artificial Wasteland uses the artificial reproduction of grass as a medium to present new aesthetic ideals about nature.
In spite of being barren and costly to maintain, ‘perfect’ lawns of short grass are often used as visual representations for an idyllic state of natural prosperity. These surfaces comfort us, for they visually portray a nature as something that is always and only green, eternally growing, ordered and homogeneous; something that humans can rationally define and thus believe to control.
In order to challenge these notions that lawns help perpetuate, as well as the ethic and cultural principles hidden behind them, Artificial Wasteland reimagines the artificial reproduction of grass. Sights of the lawn currently deemed as ‘ugly’ are carefully reproduced in 100% plastic in order present them as equally desirable ideals.

Josefin Zachrisson &Mira Bergh
"Motion Surrounded"

Designers: Josefin Zachrisson &Mira Bergh
Website: www.seats-system.com

Objects with movement in common, brought together to match its surroundings and create a venue of interaction.

Seats System (2019)
Seats System is a furniture collection whose repetitive construction, durable material choices and social focus lays a foundation for frequent usage as well as timeless design. With an ability to orchestrate shadow plays and varying shapes, Seats System is intended to bring a sense of flow to its context.

Mess (2019)
A state of mind translated into glass, examining emotions connected to materiality and motion. How and when can objects make you feel?
“Mess” is designed by Josefin Zachrisson and produced together with The Glass Factory Boda, Sweden.

KRISTÍNA PLAVČAN ŠIPULOVÁ / RITA KOSZORÚS
"The Tapestry Collage"

Designers: KRISTÍNA PLAVČAN ŠIPULOVÁ / RITA KOSZORÚS
Website: www.kristinasipulova.com www.ritakoszorus.com

Tapestry is a dialogue between artist, designer and craftsman. Each role is equally important in the whole process. The aim of the project is to revive the craft of tapestry weaving and at the same time to support the local wool processing, which is now disappearing. The Tapestry refers to the collage technique which consists of the selection of random and residual elements and their transformation into a new context, a new work, a new “reality”.

LABINAC
"LABINAC"

Designers: Maria Thereza Alves / Jimmie Durham / Jone Kvie
Website: www.labinac.com

LABINAC - a design collective made by artists. The artists Maria Thereza Alves and Jimmie Durham started in Berlin the design company LABINAC in 2018 together with Kai-Morten Vollmer. LABINAC follows the idea that Alves once expressed in the sentence: ‘The Earth is more than our daily schemes. The aesthetic life is a life worth living’. LABINAC thus designs elements that surround our living spaces and inspire discussion in our daily lives engaged with the world.

LABINAC is conceived as a design collective, and artists such as Elisa Strinna from Italy, Jone Kvie from Norway and Bev Koski from Thunder Bay, Canada, were the first artists invited to produce works. We make furniture, lights, vases among other designs.
LABINAC participated in the Milano Design Week - Fuorisalone 2019, at NOMAD VENICE in September 2019, Collectibe Brussels 2020 and the Venice Design Biennale 2021. During the Biennale Architettura di Venezia 2021 LABINAC presented designs developed for the newly re-opened Giardini Reali di Venezia commissioned by the Venice Garden Foundation.
Alves and Durham have lived together in Mexico, New York, Marseille, Brussels, Rome, Naples and Berlin. They have made their own furniture and work areas in each place over a forty-year period.

Leo Rydell Jost
"Botanica"

Designer: Leo Rydell Jost
Website: www.leorydelljost.com

Artwork that balances between a visual approach and pleasurable home living. Going beyond merely aesthetic objects to functional art.

Lindsey Adelman Studio
"Paradise by Lindsey Adelman"

Designer: Lindsey Adelman

Website: www.lindseyadelman.com

For centuries, glassblowers on the island of Murano passed down their expertise strictly through the generations, keeping their magic to themselves. But in recent years, thankfully, those master craftsmen have come to embrace and be embraced by a young wave of American glass artisans eager to reinterpret history. Such a joyous exchange was among the inspirations for Paradise, a sprawling sculptural cascade of textured globes on a network of large-link brass chains that drape as gracefully as a necklace.

Throughout, opaque and translucent cones, cylinders, spheres, and diamonds poke out at vertiginous angles, and slender polished pins add an edge of dangerous glamour. Using an innovative, labor-intensive technique, textile artist Taryn Urushido crochets the electrical wires invisibly through heavy handmade brass chains, rendering Paradise’s subtle illumination even more miraculous. In addition to an array of standard models, small-scale pendants, and sconces, Paradise was designed to be endlessly customizable: it can twist and torrent down the well of an open circular staircase or dangle endlessly across the ceiling.

American lighting designer Lindsey Adelman has long been obsessed with illumination in all its forms. Her work treads the porous border between sculpture and design, taking inspiration from such diverse sources as Eva Hesse's Rope sculptures, the pattern, colors, and bodily ornamentation of The Maasai, and the films of David Lynch. Combining organic handwrought materials like blown glass with the strong industrial beauty of machine-milled components, her lighting systems create radiant warmth while underscoring the drama of shadows and emptiness. Her Studio in New York City, founded in 2006, designs, prototypes, and builds in-house, working with a close circle of local manufacturers to develop and produce custom parts.

LLOT LLOV
"HAIRY &SALTY"

Designer: TRASH2TREASURE
Collaborators and other credits: llot llov
Website: www.llotllov.com

Haptics and craftsmanship are in the foreground in the exhibition space by LLOT LLOV. Here you can see the spirit of the Berlin design office between playfulness and tradition. On display for the first time are new forms of the hairy FRAN luminaire. The OSIS surface, developed by LLOT LLOV, for which small salt crystals react to wood with colour pigments to create fascinating organic patterns, is also being shown here in new dimensions.

Lukas Wegwerth / Crafting Plastics!
"Lukas Wegwerth in collaboration with Crafting Plastics"

Designer: Lukas Wegwerth
Collaborators and other credits: Vlasta Kubusova
Website: www.lukaswegwerth.com
www.craftingplastics.com

Lukas Wegwerth and crafting plastics! studio are happy to be back at Alcova— and excited to create an informal landscape for talks, a space to come together and exchange creatively. This is a collaboration of two studios following their very own principles and approaches to design with a focus on materials, their origin and lifecycles.

Three+One, a construction system created by Lukas Wegwerth, combines modular connectors and oak beams. The wood is locally sourced in the center of Germany and independently processed in a self-established value chain that starts with the forest owner and covers all intermediate steps from the raw resource to the finished element of the system.

Crafting Plastics! studio realizes dynamic research in biobased plastics, sparking transdisciplinary collaborations between scientists and designers. Their pursuit is to transform perishable materials into value-added products, by employing high and low technology. They define the entire material's cycle, from unrefined matter to final product until its decomposition in natural C02, water and nutrients.

NUATAN by crafting plastics! is an ecological alternative to synthetic plastic. It is an entirely biobased material solution polymerized from starch and metabolized by microorganisms from sugar. At Alcova, recent developments will be presented, pushing limits by integrating bioplastics into furniture pieces.

Marc Leschelier
"Prototype IV"

Designer: Marc Leschelier
Partner: CONCRETE CANVAS - Flavio Cosma
Website: www.marcleschelier.com

The work develops the notion of pre-architecture which is an intermediate state where architecture is materially unfinished and legally undefined to both explore new vocabularies and an alternative genre of architecture. Prearchitecture is also a moment where architecture is not yet a discipline but a wide spectrum of physical, plastic and space relationships.

Matilde Patuelli
"A Story of Control / Control of a Story"

Designer: Matilde Patuelli
Website: www.matildepatuelli.com

A Story of Control explores different ways to trick and educate the lenses filtering our way of looking
at others and ourselves. Using storytelling and playfulness as tools to reinforce empathic capacity and challenge our socially encoded perception of reality. The research develops a template for storytelling, to shape a lexicon to narrate different ways of being and feeling in relation to bipolar disorder. Starting from personal experience, in collaboration with a psychologist, the project aims at the core of the communica-tive process.

There are three dimensions representing the bipolar pattern. The one presented here is warm, immense. Its inhabitants are tiny, light, and have a colossal energetic aura around them. They run continuously, quick as arrows, and when they collide their auras bounce against each other, catapulting them towards opposi-te trajectories, this way they don’t feel pain and they don’t have to care about the other. They spend their time darting, never stopping, colliding, bouncing back, greedy of the coming and sober of the gone.

The objects create a playground, an ambiguous transitional space, whose aim is to provide a narrative tool to empower the individuals and create new communication patterns and pathways between people that care about each other, developing a third position, situated halfway and mediating ways of being.

Minji Choi


Website: www.minji-choi.com
IG: @minji_choi___

Minji Choi is a Korean artist, designer, and researcher, working from her studio in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) and Milan (Italy).

She explores the interconnections between the cultural symbolism of plants, garden design and politics in order to learn culture through nature, based on series of case studies. By acknowledging the dignity of plants, her research aims to reframe our multilayered relationship with them, by reconsidering the subtle boundaries between natural and artificial, between the moral notions of good and bad, and the consideration for the individual and the ecosystem.

To communicate the complexity of the topic, she created a provisional series of gardens that manifest the vulnerable borderlines and hierarchy using various mixed media (installation, photograph, painting).

MUSEGALLERY - Monaco
"Rattan"

Designers: Ingo Mauer, d’Accolay, Les Dalos, Georges Pelletier, Roger Capron
Website: www.muse.mc

The title holds the key to the selection of furniture and objects presented by musegallery at Alcova, Milan. The material defines the environment and redefines the atmosphere, the result of complex craftsmanship. The tight weave of these objects tells of different inspirations that revolve around the idea of a skilful interweaving of North and South. A simple room, designed by the visible traces of a poor materiality. An interior built of rattan, wood and ceramic. The place reminds us of other spaces where interior geography is shaped by archetypal forms. A Uchiwa wall lamp by Ingo Mauer from the 1970s, now a classic, diffuses the light of a post-colonial world. The evocative display of ceramics by Accolay, Les Dalos or Georges Pelletier winks at a precise artisanal identity of transalpine design, teeming with stars and knobs. An iconic choice of vintage objects that hint at destinations other than Vallauris, Cannes and Cadaques. What was once the Mediterranean parnassus of so many modern artists, with a spirit enamoured of precious craftsmanship, is now the geography of a more complex interior South. Tables by Ro-ger Capron complete the ensemble, and a pair of Scandinavian armchairs from the 1990s underlines the fact that in contemporary design, rattan is not just a material but a state of mind, intertwined exclusively with mythology and dreams. What is certain is that rattan...no longer rhymes with d'antan.

MUT Design
"Raices_11th Anniversary MUT Desig"

Designers: Alberto Sánchez, Eduardo Villalón
Website: www.mutdesign.com

A tenth anniversary is always worth celebrating, but if circumstances (such as pandemic) force you to skip it, the eleventh must be as memorable. MUT Design Studio turns eleven years old this 2021 and we want to show how much we have grown since we started back in 2010. To this end, we have devised an immersive installation containing a selection of our most iconic products set in a natural decor. The exhibition is based on 3D images made in collaboration with artist Massimo Colonna. This images as well as the exhibition are inspired by Mediterranean landscapes such as Almer a or Tenerife. Our aim is evoking in the visitor the feeling of being outside while being inside, something we have always pursued with our designs. Textures, colours, shapes all come from the inexhaustible source of inspiration nature has always been to us. Nothing recaps better these past eleven years than this.

Nilufar Gallery
"Brassless"

Designers: Antonio Barone, Destroyers / Builders, Martino Gamper, Carlo Lorenzetti, Objects of Common Interest, Odd Matter, OLDER and Alexander Vinther, Anna Diljá Sigurðardóttir, Studio Minale-Maeda, Bram Vanderbeke and Wendy Andreu, Lukas Wegwerth
Collaborators and other credits: Curated by Studio Vedèt
Website: nilufar.com/exhibition/brassless---far-2020

FAR is a parallel program curated by Studio Vedèt within the spaces of Nilufar for the past four years. The collective show BRASSLESS, initially presented at Nilufar Depot in 2020, will be presented in the frame of the design platform Alcova, during the Milan Design Week, next September. The show is a provocative yet light gesture which strikes an irreverent and playful attitude in response to a trend that has popped up everywhere in product and interior design, in companies and galleries — including Nilufar itself — in recent years.

BRASSLESS comments on the use (or abuse) of this metal, most popularly in the form of surface-layer-sheets that cover everything (and nothing in particular) in contemporary design, with little regard for the unique properties of brass. The show celebrates the return of material potentiality and meaning as urgent design topics, showing 11 projects (in different metals and 1 non-metal) that investigate physical and visual qualities of matter — exploring forms and avoiding uniformity.

In September BRASSLESS will colonise in one of the most beautiful rooms of the new magnificent Alcova location including three historical buildings of extraordinary charm, immersed in a large urban park.

NM3
"NMAL"

Designers: Nicolò Ornaghi, Francesco Zorzi, Delfino Sisto Legnani
Collaborators and other credits: Emeline Allemand, Chiara Saccani, photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani / DSL Studio
Website: www.nm3.xyz

NM3, is a design studio founded by Delfino Sisto Legnani, Nicolò Ornaghi and Francesco Zorzi. The installation presented at Alcova consist in 4 laser cutted and dry assembled objects produced out of bended inox BA 1.5mm thick steel sheets.
The aesthetics of the installation moves from the ambiguity of forms and functions.
The objects presents different and progressive dimensions, abstract forms which refer to canonical functions that we associate with the domestic environment - a bench, a console, a bookcase - and at the same time have a sculptural value in the wake of the minimalist sculpture of the second half of the twentieth century.

Nomad Studio
"nomad. Explorers of the Unexplored."

Designer: Jutta Werner
Website: www.nomad-studio.de

One of a kind design rugs, bringing sustainable interior pieces into fashionable homes.
Here at Nomad, we believe in innovation, in pushing boundaries and redefining the image of re- and upcycling in the interior industry. Our goal is to create design products with a special feel, a unique look and a meaningful story. We are inspired by faraway places, travels around the world and a nomadic lifestyle.
We create interior products that tell stories of forgotten wonders and bring a magical new energy into homes, boutique hotels, restaurants, offices and even galleries and other locations where people come together to enjoy and to create.
At Nomad, we make a conscious choice to make a difference. Being a conscious manufacturer means to take back power and support what we stand for. We define ourselves as a sustainable brand by embodying these aspects: being a small startup business, women owned, produced in a close and honest partnership with Indian weavers and using recycled materials to protect the environment and support its regeneration. Nomad proves that upcycling can be tasteful and desirable and most importantly, shape our daily lives and push global change forward.

NOV Gallery
"TECH CRAFT"

Designers: Designers: Lea Debernardi, Valentin Dubois &Yann Froidevaux, Anna Heck, Panter &Tourron, Noelani Rutz, Shizuka Saito,
Laurin Schaub
Sponsors: Ikea Foundation Switzerland
Collaborators and other credits: Matthieu Girel ( Scenography)
Website: www.novgallery.com

With the rapid arrival of artificial intelligence, it is important to question the impact of the digital age on the physical world as we know it. Are we a few years away from a radical transformation of our lifestyles, where technology takes over any industrial realization of the physical world? Or on the contrary, following the pandemic that we have gone through, the manufacturing process is making a comeback and once again becoming the evidence of our society and its evolution. While more than 90% of the world we know is physical and tangible, it is increasingly thanks to digital tools that we are getting there. Beyond facilitating the creation of objects, digital tools have made the impossible possible. But they also contributed to perpetuateour culture of material overconsumption which today is called into question. This call for projects will serve as a white space to create a new material vision, one that calls for the know-how and craftsmanship in the realization of objects with the digital tools to support it. A sustainable and regenerative approach to the manufacturing process, through the constant dialogue between digital and intuitive.

OBJECTS OF COMMON INTEREST/ Etage Projects
"Future Archaeology"

Designers: Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis
Collaborators and other credits: Etage Projects
Website: www.objectsofcommoninterest.com

Element lights
Standing transparent figures hold lights within their body, bare minimum elements combined in a volumetric object.

Holographic domesticity
A series of objects of pure shapes and spatial gestures: bent, arch, curve, stack or juxtapose, form utili-tarian domestic pieces (a chair, a table a stool an armchair and cabinet sets) of an illusionistic materiality with a holographic surface treatment leading to a playful perception of color.

Liquid Rocks
A solid rock formation sitting upon a tray on casters as an elemental gesture for creating a resting ele-ment. The rock is a familiar yet surprising material mass, semitransparent, solid and soft in touch, produ-cing a unique sensible feel.

At Alcova we suggest a futuristic domestic landscape set up within the frozen-in-time space of the nun-nery utility rooms, a spatial investigation at the intersection of history, coexistence practices, and con-temporary habitation.

OLDER
"Carolino &Scarpette"

Designers: Morten Thuesen, Letizia Caramia
Website: www.olderstudio.com

The pieces exposed will be 6 “Carolino”, wood and iron serving wagons on wheels, and 6 “SCARPETTE” stools in iron and wood, placed on a synthetic grass carpet.

Paola Zani
"The White and Red Sindrome"

Designers: Maddalena Casadei, Federico Angi e Studio Mist-o
Collaboratori e altri crediti: set up by Alessandro Mensi
Website: www.paolazani.it

Paola Zani, on the occasion of ALCOVA 2021, presents a version of the IGEA sofa, designed by Maddalena Casadei, characterized by a mix and match of different fabrics and leathers, all in white tone. It will be interfaced with FPT tables by studio Mist-O and ROMBI cushions by Federico Angi, which will be presented for the occasion in a series of limited edition colors.
Inside the installation The White and Red Sindrome, curated by Maddalena Casadei art director of the brand together with Alessandro Mensi, it will be possible to immerse oneself in a space delineated only by these two colors but characterized by the difference in materials and the multiplicity of textures. Tactile nuances that can be interpreted by each individual, invited to write a new and personal story of a never-ending relationship.

Potemine
"Alis"

Designers: Ilia Potemine
Website: www.potemine.com

Potemine is an Italian based startup that explores new technologies in design.
Alis introduces a completely new way of living with light, thanks to the IOT technology and its intuitive design the user is able to create flexible lighting systems in places where it wasn’t possible before. Alis is a powerful portable lighting device.
The user can control its functionality with simple gestures. A series of accessories and a patented mechanism turns Alis into a wall lamp a floor lamp or a desk lamp, reducing the number of devices in your environment and eliminating wires.

Project Team. FEEL GOOD
"Archetypes"

Designers: Studio CHACHA, Chulan Kwak, Chungjae Kim,
Jaewon Kang
Sponsors: Korea Craft &Design Foundation
Website: www.chulankwak.com
www.jaewonkang.kr
www.studiochacha.co.kr
http://kimchungjae.com/

Each artist of FEEL GOOD has developed a way to blend traditional techniques with modern expres-sions. And their results have the power to break down socially regulated genres or fields. Precisely calculated designs result in atypical morphological representations.
This resembles how nature sculpts our world. Just as every piece of nature is an archetype, the artists of Studio Feelgood suggest ‘pure form’ as an work method that does not recognize boundaries. Furthermore, this in turn are translated into various materials and forms, creating different archetypes in the real world.

Sammlung Walter
"The art of fabrication"

Designers: Merle Richter, Till Richter
Website: www.sammlungwalter.de

With Sammlung Walter the designers explore the art of fabrication. For this purpose the studio structure is divided into two frameworks.
The editions focuses on products in the three variations—DIY, Industrial, and Craft.
In the laboratory all kinds of projects are created. By investigating production processes, projects include collaborations with artists, researches on specific topics or holistic interior concepts.

Sébastien El Idrissi
"Like a cafè in a Milanese Bar"

Designer: Sébastien El Idrissi
Website: www.seis.studio

Be it a flat pack solid wood table, a low cost desk organizer or a stackable tea set, Sébastien El Idrissi be-lieves, that design should be as simple and pleasing as a refreshing beverage sometimes. In this mini-exhi-bition he aims to show and discuss some recent work, while offering a small drink. Please take your time and enjoy. Salute!

Schemata Architects / TANK
"SENBAN"

Designer: Jo Nagasaka
Collaborators and other credits: Naritake Fukumoto
Website: http://schemata.jp/

To begin with, Lathing is one of the technique to process objects by rotating and shaping. Round rod is often used for it because squared shape hits back chisels on its edges during rotating. When we joined the Japanese Architect Team for Venice Biennale 2021 at Venice, we made original lathe with an idea to shape rotating square wooden pillar from demolished Japanese old house from 1950s with circular saw spinning in same direction as the pillar to make round pole in same size as scaffoldings (Φ48.6mm). Scaffoldings were main supporting material of the old pillar for the exhibition in Japan Pavilion. Our aim to make the same diameter as scaffolding was to design new relationship between the two different object by connecting directly. Not just with scaffoldings, we also designed some pieces of furniture like bench &table made only with the shaped pillars.
This lathe’s unique character that shapes anything in desired shape regardless of object’s form deeply tickles our curiosity. We made some different products, Table, Fruit bowl, and stone bottle cap for this year’s Alcova.

SEM Milano
"Paesaggio"

Designers: Hannes Peer
Collaborators and other credits: 6AM glass works
Website: www.sem-milano.com

SEM – Spotti Edizioni Milano presents during this year’s Alcova Fuorisalone edition the new and expanded ‘Paesaggio’ collection by designer and architect Hannes Peer with the homonymous installation project designed also by Peer in the form of a living and dining room interior with a monumental chandelier com-posed of 1000 cast glass scales made in Murano that goes by the french name of ‘Paysage’.
‘Paysage’ is designed by Hannes Peer, distributed by SEM and produced by 6:AM Glassworks, a young and dynamic production company that interfaces between Milan and Murano. It is a sculpture of light and glass and with its organically shaped form it insinuates itself into the exhibition space and developes over a hei-ght of 5 meters. ‘Paysage’ aims to join the long Italian tradition of monumental exhibition chandeliers such as the one designed by Carlo Scarpa for the 1961 World Expo in Turin.
The ‘Butterfly’ dining and coffee table, the ‘Miur’ couch, the ‘Nuvola’ 3-seater and the ‘Alea’ chair are the newcomers to Paesaggio, this unique design collection that is entirely handcrafted in Italy now complete the Living and Dining room of this interior as well as exhibiton project.

SPREAD
"Much Peace, Love and Joy"

Designers: SPREAD
Collaborators and other credits:
Produce: Mika Takizawa (Dentsu Live)
Manufacture: Atelier Inadome, Live Art Books, NBC Meshtec, Sutoka, Print + Plant
Construction: H. Yamamoto, LPD design
Cooperation: Haruna Yamazaki, NBC Meshtec, Takeo, Yuko Noguchi, Waki Process
PR: Miho Kawamura
Website: www.spread-web.jp

SPREAD is a creative unit established by Haruna Yamada and Hirokazu Kobayashi. By fusing landscape desi-gn thoughts capturing the environment over a long period of time with graphic design techniques convey vivid visual impressions, they exhibit two works.

1.“Much Peace, Love and Joy”
By special letterpress printing, inimitable gradations are printed with vivid colors, and the printed matter is then hand-tore into pieces all with its unique shape. The work is then composed by accumulating a huge number of those pieces. The accumulation of gradient fragments is a metaphor for existence, situations, and perspectives. It arouses energy and imagination for the future when viewers visualize their own sto-nes, lands, drift ice, lives, and souls.

2.“Mesh Virus-Control Flag Partition”
A new item to color the space by fusing the joy of colors and the new virus-suppressing technology. The use of polyester mesh is adopted- it’s also used as a filter in the medical field. With the attachment of nanoparticles produced in a new technology that can suppress viruses and bacteria by 99.9%, it helps to sanitize and prevent droplet infection. The vitality of colors fills the space with joy and creates a new life-style for easy but safe communication.

Studio Ariane Shirvani
"SWEET YELLOW"

Designers: Ariane Rabel
Website: www.arianeshirvani.com

Flowers use a variety of signals to advertise rewards to their pollinators. Sweet yellow is a hypothetical flower field. a room where the floral signal transformed into olfactory constitutes and is defined by a cer-tain wavelength. The exhibition aims to evoke human sense and reconfigure our relationship with nature.
The works include a series of vases carrying the chemical compound developed from a yellow floral signal. The distinct opening at the top of the vase flows into a narrow form. It sends the smell wafting up the bottle, releasing it into the air. The second part of the installation includes UVL yellow lights suspended from the ceiling. The light spectrum is limited to light above 500 lm to simulate the floral color.
This exhibition emphasizes human interaction with the environmental surrounding through our senses.

Studio Benjamin Motoc
"Elemental Waltz"

Designer: Benjamin Motoc
Website: www.benjaminmotoc.com

Seduced by the idea of opposite forces generating something new, Benjamin Motoc creates the Elemental Waltz collection. He manipulates hot melted wax and frozen water into material choreographies to design unique structures. Some birthmarks here, a few wrinkles there ; the fragile shapes of wax are taken to the foundry and recast in everlasting metal. Offsprings of a process that juxtaposes immiscible materials, the bronze console and the two aluminium trophies stand on their structure of runners which are the tubes that the metal was poured through.

Usually cut off, these manufacturing elements bring the design of the objects into close conversation with the production process. The body of work displays intricate reliefs and oddly familiar shapes, echoing Motoc’s artistic approach in design and his conceptuel crafting methods.

Studio Groovido
"Castingland"

Designers: Gianmaria Della Ratta, Giorgio Gasco
Website: www.groovido.com

Aluminium clusters and stems appear from a dark cloud of glass foam incorporating the surrounding space and elements.
The collection, question the limit between natural and artificial in the domestic realm.
The Unpredictability of the casting technique developed, in fact trick the human eye, presenting a hybrid aesthetic.
On one side the material evokes a meteorite and the fascination for the unknown, on the other a scaffolding supporting and suspending the different functions.

Studio Zero
"Transparent Landscapes"

Designers: Anna Seminara, Maria Francesca Cicirelli
Website: www.designstudiozero.com

Transparent and permeable veils, vibrant with light and color, divide the space and invite us to cross it in an immersive and sensorial experience, both physically and poetically. And through these curtains, in a ri-tual of discovery and revelation, there emerges a landscape that we recognize as being both domestic and, at the same time, profoundly abstract. A universe of transparencies, overlaps and layers of materials and colors, metaphors and meanings, that reveals the intimately dreamlike and immaterial nature of the world. Lighting and artistic elements fill these evocative environments, emphasizing the coexistence of all these universes.
Composizione Astratta mirror is a tribute to light and matter, to reflection and transparency in which co-loured mirrors and metal surfaces seem to intersect and intertwine to reveal new poetic and compositional qualities. In our carpet Sedimenti, transparent surfaces overlap and stratify in what is perceived as a per-petual motion and a never-ending aspiration towards illusory forms of balance. The Equilibristi floor lamps are anthropomorphic forms that rise up thin and slender, as if in a mystical dance. They almost seem to start moving, like dreamlike presences that inhabit the rooms of imagination more than those of reality. Their essence gives environments that transcendental feature that clearly shows the strength of objects, the bonds they create and how they influence the spaces in our lives.

Studiolow
"Modern Aviaries"

Designers: Ismaël Rifaï and Héloïse Charital
Sponsor: Geo-design platform
Website: www.studiolow.fr

Junk is changing the habits of wildlife around the world. White storks—once emblems of migration—are settling down thanks to the food stability offered by open landfills. Although a food scarcity in the 1970s reduced the population of the storks internationally, their numbers have boomed in southern Europe and northern Africa. There were 1,187 storks in Portugal in 1995—there are now approximately 14,000. Despite this, landfills are not the ideal home. Although food is abundant, changing waste habits are impacting the storks. They can become trapped in or eat pieces of plastic and can be shocked by high-voltage electricity cables.

Studiolow’s investigation offers a frame for exploring landfills as architectures of junk, with their own ecosystems and structures built on the waste generated by urban centres nearby. Focusing on landfills at Evora in Portugal, Dos Hermanas in Spain and Kenitra in Morocco, Modern Aviaries depicts open landfills as artificial landscapes. Three sculptures represent the confluence of the natural and the man made, a mountain of junk, a wastewater lake and an electric pole. Together, they act as landmarks of a constructed ecosystem, echoing the effects of the Anthropocene on the world’s systems.

The Great Design Disaster
"Empty Room"

Designers: The Great Design Disaster
Collaborators and other credits:
Joy Herro, Gregory Gatserelia (Founders),
Studio Vedet (Visual identity, graphics and web design),
Craig Peritz (Copywriter),
Mattia Parodi (Photographer)
Sponsors: Base s.r.l.
Website: thegreatdesigndisaster.com

The Great Design Disaster is ready for the ALCOVA Design Fair with a truly original display concept. However, the layout only became clear after considerable struggle on the part of the company dedicated to bespoke design and creating a million designs rather than selling one good design a million times. The TGDD booth promises to be an incitement to future clients to let their imaginations run free and come up with an onslaught of one-of-a-kind pieces promoting beautiful design for generations to come.

The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
"Design Switzerland"

Designers: Altherr/Weiss, Benjamin Bichsel, Emilien Jaury &Clovis Grosbost, Fabien Roy, Filipe &Viricel, Miloš Ristin, Panter &Tourron, read on, Sarah Hossli, Superlife
Collaborators and other credits: Iiode (scenography), Superposition (video), Raphaëlle Mueller (photography), May Concepts (PR)
Partners: Création Baumann, Superposition, APPIA
Website: www.designswitzerland.ch

The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia is pleased to present a line-up of ten emergent Swiss design studios at Milan Design Week from 5th - 12th September 2021. Showcased as the Design Switzerland exhibition, this thought-provoking selection of projects exposes contemporary Swiss design to an international audience. Supporting marketable design products through annual calls for applications, Pro Helvetia seeks to encourage innovation, with a focus on sustainability and diversity. This year, the showcase explores essential social and environmental topics in sectors such as medical, hospitality and technology. From biodegradable surgical gowns to modular lighting systems, newly interpreted concepts of traditional furniture and multifunctional phone cases, the designers display innovative solutions to current societal issues. The ten studios and projects selected for their visionary ideas and practices are; Altherr/Weiss, Benjamin Bichsel, Emilien Jaury &Clovis Grosbost, Fabien Roy, Filipe &Viricel, Miloš Ristin, Panter &Tourron, read on, Sarah Hossli and Superlife.

TIPSTUDIO
"Secondo Fuoco"

Designers: TIPSTUDIO (Imma Matera + Tommaso Lucarini)
Collaborators and other credits: Fonderia Artistica Versiliese
Website: www.tipstudio.it

An investigation into slags in a reflection on the multiple souls of matter: Its mineral origin, re-obtained by smelting processes, and its artificiality drove by man. In collaboration with the Fonderia Artistica Versiliese tipstudio designed ‘Secondo Fuoco’, a sculptural and material collection combing the impurity of the scoria and the purity of bronze.
Tipstudio, Imma Matera and Tommaso Lucarini, have chosen to focus on the unless, on metal waste exploring the potential of the scoria in a link between the traditional approach to foundry culture and the spontaneity of metals. They collets those impure materials coming from smelting process and then they catalogue, trim, mill and stick them together with wax. A Further Fire (Secondo Fuoco) will follow to create new and unique objects: Functional and material sculptures each containing its inverse, its exact contrary. While the scoria highlights the spontaneity and expressions of this almost rocky impure matter, the bronze acts as a binder and structural element.

TRAME
"New Domestic Landscape across the Mediterranean"

Designers: Giovanni De Francesco, Julie Richoz, Maddalena Casadei, Maria Jeglinska, Objects of Common Interest, Sophie Dries
Website: www.trameparis.com

TRAME is a homeware brand exploring new domestic landscapes across the Mediterranean. Every collection of homeware and accessories is inspired by a historical episode, reflects a cross-cultural journey and celebrates the exceptional know-how of Mediterranean craftsmen.

TRAME believes in encounters and co-creation: the name of the brand refers to the weaves in the carpets that represent the heart of its collections but also to the intersecting of the voices and gazes of both the designers and the artisans involved in the act of creation.

By introducing contemporary designers to traditional craftsmen TRAME brings a fresh point of view to those who have spent generations refining artisan techniques and provides economic benefits for local communities, while helping to conserve our common cultural heritage.

TRASH2TREASURE
"T2T - REFLECT UPCYCLING"

Designers: LLOT LLOV
Collaborators and other credits: noPB
Sponsor: cosnova beauty
Website: www.llotllov.com
www.trash2treasure.eu

In cooperation with the German cosmetics company cosnova Beauty as provider of materials and the upcycling platform Trash2Treasure.eu , this spectacular lighting installation by LLOT LLOV was created from 290 reused face cream containers.

The transformation into something new shows that things that we would otherwise throw away are not only valuable in the context of the circular economy, but can also be used as a statement and supplement to the own portfolio. Developed from an idea within the framework of the innovation team at cosnova beauty, TRASH2TREASURE now operates as a non-for-profit start-up under the umbrella of the cosnova group.

Visionnaire
"De Rerum Natura - by Gupica For Visionnaire"

Designers: Gupica
Website: www.visionnaire-home.com

In an abandoned urban forest in the former military area of the Inganni district, early 20th-century buildings stand overgrown with vegetation.
On the first floor of the “Casa delle suore”, in a small room with two windows, the natural light is suffused, filtered by the leaves of an external nature that takes possession of the building.
In this penumbra the site-specific installation “De Rerum Natura” by Gunilla Zamboni, in art Gupica, comes to life.
The light design project “Aracea” is a collection of sculptural lamps designed by Gupica for Visionnaire, presented in all its models for the first time at Alcova.
A delicate and at the same time iconic presence, the “Aracea” lamp is inspired by exotic plants, synthesising their forms and transforming the leaf into a luminous object.
The LED light source, like lifeblood, passes through the leaf’s central vein, producing a type of direct lighting with the possibility of orientation, simulating the natural movements of a plant.
In this place the leaf, represented in its different scales, becomes a symbol, the object of an aesthetic investigation, the leitmotif of the installation in which the lamps play the leading role among embroidered velvet walls and carpets made of laser-cut recycled leather leaves.
The project is a reflection on the natural/artificial dichotomy as a constant/variant in the relationship between man and nature. A place where interior and exterior blend to create an unexpected and visionary scenario.