Via Tortona was just a sleepy, warehouse-filled street southwest of Milan’s centre, when Italian Vogue art director Flavio Lucchini and photographer Fabrizio Ferri opened photography studios there in 1983. People thought they were crazy, but the design and fashion worlds followed and Zona Tortona is now a mainstay of Milan Design Week.
I got up bright and early and headed straight to the Rain House, an installation by Budapest-based IVANKA Studio and Concrete Factory. The firm was founded by Katalin Ivanka and Andras Ivanka in 2003 and their work is largely based on use of concrete.
Rain House dramatised their latest innovation, a system that converts rainwater into drinking water, because bottled water has a carbon footprint 1000 times that of tap water, and tap water has a carbon footprint 1000 times that of rainwater.
The Screwtable designed by Andreas Benesser for Krimberg is available in either galvanised or powder-coated metal and simply screws into the ground creating a simple and flexible outdoor table.
Italian design brand ex.t were showing two products designed by my friends Note Design Studio – the first was a series of hooks that ex.t say “in material, form and colour give a warm atmosphere with a Scandinavian touch.”
The second was the new table edition of the Fuse Pendant Lamp, first presented at IMM Cologne last year. It’s made of ceramic, which gives it a tactile and homely quality.
Michael Remerich‘s Collage won an ex.t competition launched in September 2013, to find a new piece of furniture to be launched in Milan. The product had to be original, well matched with other ex.t products, and easy to produce, ship and pack. There was a lot of wall storage in Milan and this was one of my favourite examples.
I loved the delicate lines of this simple stool by BPR Project.
And finally, Profile by Un-Do Design is simply constructed from four slabs of wood held together with red rope. Un-Do Design is Yasutaka Kimura and Rui Matsuo and all their products are handmade in Japan.
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- out and about :: wallpaper*handmade, milan 2014
- out and about :: milan 2014 preview
- out and about :: in the making (pt 2)
- out and about :: hello, my name is paul smith
