Spoken lines by Colin King for Beni Rugs at Alcova | Milan Design week 2022

The main reason I started vosgesparis back in 2007 was because I wanted to share that what I love in interiors. Over the years I welcomed a lot of like minded people on the blog who loved to see what caught my eye and for myself the blog is my personal journey and photobook in interiors.

Milan Design week is by far my most loved week in interiors and for over a decade I travel to milan to immerse myself in everything that has to do with interior. The good weather, being able to speak Italian for the whole week and the great food and company makes every week even more special to remember.

Alcova

In addition to the latest collections that are often the first to be launched in Milan, the various installations in the often special places where you normally do not enter are what I like most. So was this years edition of Alcova!

Alcova is a platform for independent design developed by Valentina Ciuffi (founder of Studio Vedèt) and Joseph Grima (founder of Space Caviar). Currently operating as an itinerant network of exhibition spaces across multiple sites in and around Milan, it activates forgotten locations of historical significance, temporarily recasting them as venues for exhibitions, installations and performances.

For Milan Design week 2022 Alcova choose an abandoned military hospital and former mental institution, Centro Ospedaliero Militare di Baggio. Over different buildings, all connected by beautiful green and tall trees giving a bit of shadow at the sweltering hot location. 80 international exhibitors including independent designers, innovative brands, galleries, cultural institutions and companies showed their works.

Beni Rugs

Previously I showed a collaboration between Beni Rugs and Athena Calderone on the blog called Broken Symmetry and from what I had seen I was curious to see their next collaboration: Spoken Lines. The Spoken Lines collection is designed in partnership with Colin King and inspired by mosaic-clad Milanese entryways and rationalist architecture: Marrakech meets Milan.

Colin was stylist for different photoshoots of the Beni collections and this year he has been named as Artistic Director at large at Beni Rugs and will release three distinct collections for Beni over the course of the year, each of which aims to expand the visual language of the Moroccan rug while showcasing a reverence for the traditional techniques and materials that define the time-honored craft.

Spoken Lines

Spoken Lines draws inspirations from Milanese architect Piero Portaluppi’s rationalist architecture as well, as said, the patterns and colors of Milan’s entryways and foyers. At Alcova two rugs of the collection were presented. The ‘Entrata’ rug, gently touched by the installation by contemporary artist Amine el Gotaibi and the ‘Ancora’ rug on the wall.

All rugs are made to order in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where a community of Amazigh (Berber) descendants have been crafting handwoven rugs in the same way for thousands of years – entirely by hand, one knot at a time.

Inside one of the buildings, please have a look at my two highlights on my Instagram for more images of the Alcova site Have a look here at other articles I wrote about Milan Design week