These are the projects that stand out the most for me which talk about flexibility (1+2) and tactility, two ongoing themes that will stay for us a while:
1// BUILT BY ALL BY STUDIOMAMA X MINI LIVING
Studiomama has been transforming for MINI LIVING an industrial space into a dynamic dwelling for a community to enjoy.Each unique living is equipped with a totem – a highly individualised integrated piece of furniture- and offers inhabitants the opportunity to choose when to open or close their dwellings. The private and communal areas are distinct from one another, yet intertwined. Share spaces include a kitchen, a garden, a gym and an atrium. The installation combines collaborative design and personal expression through adaptable, modular systems. They believe great communities are BUILT BY ALL.
If you ask yourself what the automobile brand MINI has to do with a living concept, here goes their answer:
Staying true to their BUILT BY ALL theme, in a ware house next to the exhibition, Mini Living would encourage all visitors to develop their own environments in its FACTORY OF IDEAS. The future no longer lies in the hands of experts alone. When it comes to housing and everyday life, inhabitants are increasingly playing a key role.
I have loved putting together a small condo myself. See a few images:
2// WOOD IN PROGRESS BY ENVISIONS X FINSA
This is the third year in a row I am observing the Envisions designer group with their different proposals at Milan. They kept on the very creative collaboration with Spanish wood manufacturer Finsa which started last year showing semi-finished product instead of finalised collections.
The idea is to trigger possibilities that might be inspiring for both sides, the designer in the first place and visionary/client on the other side who senses an opportunity to convert the displayed material into a new product. The designer group behind Envisions aims for a out-of-the-box thinking being open for new ways of collaborations.
The green light has been given to six of the previously created researches in 2017, which the designers have distinctively been maturing into a versatile and industry-worthy collection of materials upscaled, repeating and carefully composing together different panels.
The exhibition located in Tortona firstly consists of a conceptual and impressionistic application of the previously handcrafted materials – now industrially altered in the factories of Finsa in North West Spain.
The exhibitions looked playful, versatile and offered a wide range of possibilities for the architecture, interior design, furniture field, or any other creative discipline one might think it can fit into.
Designs by Aukje Fleur Janssen, Elvis Wesley, Roos Gomperts, Sanne Schunmann, Simone Post, Thomas Trum
3// SOFTWEAR BY LI EDELKOORT x GOOGLE
This exhibition was stretching across three rooms at Rossana Orlandi‘s terrain which made it a good excuse to visit the galley space anyway and see in first person the project Orlandi was launching aimed at changing the perception of plastic and ensuring the material is used responsibly. But that might be a different post:)
According to Lidewij Edelkoort the next two decades a bespoke and made-to-pleasure program of personal preferences and tastes will draw like-minded people together and allow for a more intimate kinship. Our intelligent product will become evermore intuitive, taking on tasks with greater anticipation. Preparing us for a softer and slower life.
Software is material that informs a computer. Softwear is textile that forms a lifestyle.
After two decades families live together with their smart objects; learning and reading, researching and bingeing, writing and listening, all at the same time. Used to multiple screens, contemporary humans indulge in layers of experience, navigating the excess of access, surfing with acquired acumen. On-line living transforms the home into a holistic center, where mediation and virtual reality will feed the spirit and train the mind.
Edelkoort invited Kiki van Eijk to produce six unique-edition textiles/rugs that encapsulate the essence of software.
Based on miniature still lives of hand-cut fabrics including Google’s materials, the collages were photographed and digitally converted to a larger scale before being woven on a jacquard loom as you can appreciate below.
Elements from a domestic interior illustrate Google’s thoughtfully designed vision of the fusion of technology and lifestyle.
Softwear’s incorporation of textiles, tactility and wellness challenges the role of hardware at home, prompting a conversation about the future of technology and its integrated presence in our lives.
Edelkoort has been talking about tactility now for two decades and the need to counterbalance the digital world with softer materials to seek for balance in our homes. The collaboration with Google shows how consumer technology can stand out by blending into a more textured day by day life.
