This year’s trends: it’s low; it’s ethnic; it’s orange.
Absence of driving design movement
Milan is known as a place for new ideas but it was this year that the industry craved for The Next Big Thing. Without a clear design movement, individual statements trumped aesthetic consensus. Examples of individualistic soul-searchings are:
- At Driade, the furniture giant, Naoto Fukasawa made a big white leather
pouf, a replica (but 41 times as large) of a stone he found beside a
river;
- Hella Jongerius hand-dipped porcelain;
- and the Bouroullec
brothers made bits of coral-shaped plastic for people who might want to
fashion wall screens in any size or color.
Tom Dixon, creative director of Habitat, the British furnishings chain wants "anti-design". "The D word has been misattributed to things that are just styling. You
can go around in circles looking at color, pattern and flavor, but
unless you can find the real point of difference, it’s confusing."
Even Phillipe Starck got into the flow of designs without substance with his gold-plated gun-shaped lamps for Flos.
State of the industry
Exports to the United States and Germany, the two leading markets for
Italian furnishings, were down last year by 12.7 percent and 6.4
percent, respectively, although the overall export market rose by 1.5
percent, to roughly $16 billion. So all were hoping that this year
would produce a few more solid winners.
Notable design achievements: Security Fencing
At the Paul Smith showroom, Matthias Megyeri, a 2003 graduate of the Royal College of Art (RCA is considered to be the UK’s version of the Art Center in Pasadena or similar) who displayed his lace curtain woven to look like a security fence that would probably fool any burglar at a distance, while a formidable cast iron fence bore spikes with cast aluminum cartoon heads. Megyeri said: "People have a huge desire for cuteness in their lives - thus the
smiley face - but there is also this immense paranoia and fear of
terrorism."
Consumer purchase habits are still influenced by external fears (fear and paranoid over global terrorism). This collaborates with the mega-trend Cocooning (life concentrated around the home).
His fencing has attracted considerable attention from homeowners in Pakistan to fashion shops in Tokyo. Megyeri’s designs as he calls them "placebo products" were snatched up by Paola Antonelli, a curator at MoMA, for a show on "emergency design"
Notable design achievements: Vitra
Another is fusing technology with work and leisure, this makes the home more interesting and a more active place again. Vitra is at the leading edge of this approach after a detour in office designs. Some of the strongest work on display melded technology in invisible ways with appealing soft-edged form and a sense of craftsmanship.
Many of these designs were by women, whose influence even in the
challenging realm of high-tech plastics has grown steadily in recent
years. The Milan fair - and design in general - has always been
dominated by men. "Design is a macho field," said Patrizia Moroso of
Moroso, who is a daughter of the company founders. "And so women have
to work that much harder to make a difference. Their work is often more
surprising, in more subtle ways."
Notable design achievements: Others
T-Table by Kartrell
Majolica plates by Tichelaar
Link: The New York Times > Home & Garden > Which Way Design?.
