Meeting Italian design with DDN magazine | Milan design week 2017


This years design week I not only visited the many events downtown, but also spent a day at the actual Salone del Mobile where on invitation of DDN Magazine I joined a tour organized in collaboration with eleven major Italian design brands. Together with Francesca Russo of DDN and a group of bloggers, we visited the stands of the Italian brands during a three hour tour through the different halls, where we got to meet the designers and learned more about the brands and their new collections.

Among the list some brands I would have never visited without getting to know them through this tour, and other brands whois products were, and are even higher on my wish list now after visiting them. This definitely includes the products of CTRLZAK for JCP a mix of art and design where classic meets contemporary in a surprising new way that defies the norm. I will show some more of JCP in a future blogpost, so stay tuned!

You might have been able to follow me on insta stories, a fun and fast way to have a peek through my eyes during a busy day at the fair. Taking in eleven brands, showing them on insta stories and listening to the designers is not an easy task in the short time we had been given with each brand.

Back home I had another look through my pictures, their catalogus and websites to select some of my favourite pieces from the new collections in this recap of the Salone, unfortunately I did not had any time to visit some of my favourite Scandinavian brands, the young designers or more of this years Euroluce.

MDF Italia – Sign filo
MDF Italia – Sign Matt

Although our visit to the stand of MDF Italia was mostly concentrated around their new flexible table system Axy by Claudio Bellini which had some really nice surfaces, my eye caught the beautiful chairs, cupboards and sofa elements. First picture in the post shows the ‘Minima 3.0’ shelving cabinet, I am a fan of the series as there are endless possibilities to make freestanding or floating cabinets. ‘Cosy’ is their new element sofa, pretty nice in pink too!

What really caught my eye was the ‘Sign filo’ chair by Piergiorgio Cazzaniga with it’s trending materials and finish. And the all new monochrome series ‘Sign Matt’ that with the new matt finish can now also be used outside… gotta love this concrete look.

The picture above I showed on Instagram and shows the wallpaper and furniture by CTRLZAK for JCP. A great white stand showing the work of the different designers. I somehow always seem to fall for the metal and raw, big blocks of lava stone is used here, in combination with striking white!

Remember the amazing antivilla I wrote about some time ago, have a look here if you love the picture above, in the post I showed the beautiful 70ties sofa by Mario Marenco for Arflex, one of the other brands we visited at the Salone. At the stand lots of new design from designers like Jamie Haynon with ‘Arcolar’ a modular system sofa and a set of small tables, pictured below.

Arflex – Arcolar by Jamie Haynon

Gallotti&Radice

Gallotti&Radice is a brand I wanted to work with for some time and I loved their presentation at the Salone! So elegant and sophisticated in the exact right amount. Beautiful materials and finishes, new upholstery and lighting solutions, warm colours, soft curves, rich textures and sumptuous gleaming metals and decorated with nice objects, lots of green and beautiful stills.

What stood out was the geometrical mirror art by Studio Pepe, which was made especially for the stand. I can’t wait to see their own exhibition on the blog of Agata, who went to visit them during Design week.


 Gallotti&Radice

 Gallotti&Radice

Gallotti&Radice

Artemedi

The stand of Artemide with it’s white panel curtains reminded me of the beautiful COS installation two years ago during Milan design week, and it was such a pleasure to find my friends of LZF lamps right next to them and got the change to say hello.


Back to Artemide and their new collection with, just to name one, the new Tolomeo maxi, a huge version of the iconic Tolomeo we all know. What really caught my eye though was the Yanzi a lightweight composition of graphic signs, pictured above by Neri & Hu.

More Italian design at Poliform, I loved the picture below showed in Elle Decor Italia and showing Mad Queen, Dama coffee table and Onda pouf



Poliform / photo by Andrea Ferrari



We started at Gianfranco Ferré Home the brand inspired by by menswear fabrics and characterized by the use of distressed shades on woods and slightly antique finishing in pure Shabby Chic style as they describe their philosophy, followed by Roberto Cavalli Home Interiors.

Both brands are known for the use of luxury materials, what I experienced at Roberto Cavalli was lots of soft luxury materials, think velvet, silk lots of animal prints in both fabric and glass and the use of bronze and marble. Lots of green dominated in many of the stands we visited and I had to think a lot of the original square atrium I designed for my own stand earlier this year for imm.

Natuzzi is one of the largest Italian furniture companies and offers a wide range of leather sofas for over fifty years. Annibale Colombo presented cupboard called Mettitutto (add everything! if I should translate the name) a multi functional cupboard with glass shelves and containers that could be used anywhere, Annibale Colombo is one of the oldest cabinet makers of Italy designing custom-made solutions for private residences to hotels.

When saying Kartell the first thing that comes to mind it colour lots of colour and some iconic design pieces. I was surprised to see a line of tableware in earthy colours in their huge stand, no time to make pictures though.

Roberto Cavalli

Gianfranco Ferrè Home 

These pictures were made during Milan design week 2017, find all my posts on the blog under ‘Milan design week’ and have a look at this Milan design week Pinterest album for all the pictures I made during the DDN Magazine tour and the fuorisalone.