Milan Furniture Fair 2012

With Milan fair over for another year, I thought I would post a little photo diary of my three day trip.

Week before the Fair

I did my usual checks to make sure that my hotel and flights were all booked and OK, and realised that I had booked both for a day too early, after a £60 change of flight charge I was back on track to fly out on Wednesday the 18th April.

With a 4.30am alarm call, the drive to Gatwick at that ungodly hour was uneventful and the airport was unusually efficient with very little queuing. I was lucky to the get one of the 3 front row seats with the extra leg room (I’m 6″5`), and for those who know me well, it will come as no surprise that I was asleep before some people had even boarded!!!

As we taxied on the runway, I was rudely awakened by a commotion at the back of the plane, someone had stood up or something, took very little notice and went happily back to sleep.

After a nice nap that lasted almost all the way to Milan, I awoke slightly better rested. On the bus from the plane to the terminal the Captain joined us, and he was duly interrogated about the person that had caused the commotion, and why he had to be restrained and handcuffed to the seat, with police waiting for him on the runway.  He gave very little away, except that this was the 6th time they had trying to deport him back to Italy, and the disturbance was his way of trying to be removed from the flight again.

Day 1

The Fair

For those who have never been or heard of Fuori Saloni (Milan Furniture Fair), it’s in the new Milan Fair Rho Pero and it`s one of the largest shows world-wide with 8 large pavilions for indoor exhibitions and 60,000m for outdoor exhibitions space. The Milan Fair is one of the most important in the international trade fair sectors, full of the best (and some of the worst) design products you will find anywhere. Here are my picks of the good, the bad and the downright ugly…

The Good

Desalto

Alternative

TAO design

Jab

Arper

45 Kilo

Dots design studio

deCafe

Lights made with used coffee beans

IED MAD+BCN

Herb garden made with an old bed frame and plastic bottles

Snaidero

MK

The Bad

…and The Ugly

Day 2

With the fair done, it`s now the time for the satellite shows dotted around Milan city. With 367 organised exhibitions from front rooms, to large warehouses not to mention all the other unofficial Street sides shows. The hippest area traditionally being Tortona.

Following another day walking for 12 hours: here’s the best of what I found.

Valcucine & DeMode

Full circle designed kitchen, made with mostly recycled materials. Once it has finished it’s life as a kitchen, Valcucine will collect it and recycle it, free of charge

Austrian Design

Agape

  L’Invisibile

The best thing at Milan, an almost invisible electrical door… it’s amazing when you see detail working so well…

Molteni & C

  Resident

Blackbody

Day 3

Woke up to painful calf muscles, following 2 solid days of pounding the fair and streets of Milan. Another good breakfast and back to Tortona to see the rest of what I missed the night before. It’s unfortunate that the area has lost its edge. The big companies have moved in and are trying to piggy back on the coolness of the previous years. But this is the best of what I found there.

Chimere

spoil your pets

Saazs

Glass which are a heaters or that change from clear to sandblasted. Neat.

With a new area having started in the north of Milan, I worked my way up to Via Ventura; this new frontier was full of the best that Milan can offer, and the coolest young designers around.

 

Wendy Maarten

Chelsea Flower Show: great, but was it useful?

As luck would have it, my dear mother is a member of the Royal Horticultural Society, as is a very good friend of hers. She rustled up some tickets for the Tuesday afternoon of the Chelsea Flower Show, and forced me into making the effort to actually stop working for an afternoon. She persuaded me that this would be a useful fact-finding mission, and who am I to argue with my interiors mentor? Everything I learned about interiors started with my apprenticeship in her interior design company.

I have to admit I was experiencing a great sense of apprehension, which was less to do with myopic 4 x 4 drivers  and more to do with with an irrational trepidation about gardening. Borderline phobia. I seem to have developed this over many years and it even comes with a tag line: “See these fingers? All pink; not a drop of green in sight”. Maybe it is something to do with being ‘forced’ to weed the garden as a child; who knows. All I knew is that I was in for a lot of plants that I couldn’t pick from plastic, slow moving septuagenarians, slow moving octogenarians, seas of cravat’s, blazers, and jolly hockey sticks. And I wasn’t wrong.

Immediately on entering I found myself being jostled by some rather robust elderly ladies who were rather effective with their queue jumping technique. One could be under the misapprehension that these were sweet old dears, but make no mistake, these were hardened Flower Show veterans, whose cunning was matched only by their surprising aggression. Before I knew it they had muscled past our group, followed closely by a solitary immaculately turned out gentleman (with cravat & blazer), who meted out the necessary apologies with a wry knowing smile. If I was to attempt my best Holmesian deduction, I would say he was an ex tank commander who would have given his right arm to have these feral females as his tank crew, back in the day. And in the blink of an eye they were through security and making their way to the show highlights and to grab some bargain or other.

Now, as I was in the company of seasoned visitors, I was happy to be guided through the show and I was really only expecting to be people watching. And staring blankly at plants I couldn’t name, let alone describe. But, I have to admit I was surprised. Pleasantly. Our first call was to what turned out to be the Best Show Garden: The Daily Telegraph Garden. This, I was told, was a very impressive garden at the time; all before learning it was the winner.

Now of course, being an interiors man, I’m looking at the sunken terrace, noting the water feature and wondering what the columns are representative of. This, of course, is entirely the wrong predilection altogether and one I should have kept to myself. Anyway, after being suitably admonished we walked on towards the Pavilion where it turns out I was actually going to be impressed by flowers. Really.

I’m pretty sure that these were gathered from a virtual set belonging to Avatar and that they probably glow in the dark. As you can tell, my knowledge of flowers is about as extensive as a river network in the Sahara desert. But I couldn’t help but be blown away by the magnitude and variety on show, as well as the Herculean effort required to get these things to the show and in bloom at the right time. The mind boggles. Speaking of which:

There is entirely no need for this level of achievement; it only makes the viewer feel so inadequate that they swear to never pick up a trowel ever again. Well that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it. Honestly, I have never been so impressed by floral decoration in my entire life. Stunning. However, I’m not seeing a use for this in any interiors projects; which was the stated intention. Not any time soon, anyway. But then I came across this:

This, I thought to myself, is useful stuff. With space being such a premium in London, this is an excellent way to bring some much needed greenery into projects. And it can be used inside. The company in question is inundated with projects, so I shall not mention their name, but suffice it to say that they are not inexpensive and the irrigation system suits larger areas. They insist on a maintenance contract which is augmented by a remote sensing system based on an active SIM card and the installation requires careful planning. Not only is the irrigation system a tad tricky, but the wall requires careful lighting and you’ll need a lighting designer for that. They also produced a wall for my favourite garden at the show: the Monaco Garden.

Yes, of course I liked it because of the architectural element and the shallow pool (yes, I am using a dual meaning there), but the living wall was impressive as well. The courtyard space at the rear was beautifully proportioned too, although I wasn’t so sold on the seating…

If you are seriously interested in the living wall system and have a project that can wait until next year, feel free to get in touch with us at Morph and we’ll endeavour to help out. Otherwise, I didn’t blog about it and you didn’t read it here…

Get plastered…

It’s a long time after the dust has settled from the Milan Fair 2010, but there are a few trends still to make their way into our everyday design world. One trend that we at Morph are particularly keen on is getting plastered… literally. Plaster work is the area where a bit of lateral thinking can really add interest to otherwise bland expansive walls and monotonous colour schemes. We love simple modern lines, bordering on the bare minimalist, but a cheeky insertion of the missing ingredient of modern house building never goes amiss. We’re talking about ‘ornament’. In Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian properties ornamental detailing was rife: from dentil mouldings, twisted pillasters and reeded columns to simple plaster covings and ceiling roses all added texture and content. In today’s interior design, we’re shown the way to exciting plaster by companies such as Solomon & Wu, with their contemporary take on coving and ceiling rose designs, which they brought to LDF (click for link) in September. Art, as ever, leads the way in breaking conventions with luminary individuals such as Alexandre Farto-Vhils (below)

His inspiring work really translates well into interiors, with his simple use of type to make a ‘real statement’, if you’ll pardon the pun…

The introduction of texture into the vertical surfaces of rooms gives rise to endless possibilities, as explored by Caterina Tiazzoldi for ToolBox (below).

Obviously the cleaners would be kept really busy there, as with this apartment by Pascal Grasso Architectes.

Photograph by Nicolas Dorval Bory and full article at Dezeen.

I think that the best marriage of Farto-Vihls and practical interiors was in this Studio House by Studio Octopi (below), where walls are not only opened up to allow in more light and a feeling of space but also combine a practical element of shelving. Again, full article here at Dezeen.

Not only has the trend moved from art to interiors, but the baton has been taken up by product suppliers as well. One of our favourite stands at the Milan Fair had to be the new Soft Architecture by Flos. The echo of ornamental plasterwork is cleverly inverted, evolving into a new subtle way of looking at adding texture.

The insertion of what appears to be liquid plaster creating a lighting channel that projects into the space is a great way of playfully softening harsh geometric lines (below). The look is unashamedly minimal, yet soft and an almost comforting organic feel.

And it didn’t stop with our friends at Flos. We were highly impressed with these cooker hoods below. But as the Italians are quite slow at bringing show-pieces onto the UK market after Milan, these chaps shall remain nameless. This appliance would work beautifully alongside the Flos piece above…

And this hood (below) would work well with recessed lighting. As for anticipated availability on the UK market; drop us a line and we’ll start a petition!

 

“Would you like a slice of London Design Festival with that drink, sir?”

As London Design Festival draws to a close, for those of you that missed the shows, here’s a quick run through of sights that caught our eye this week. Apologies in advance for some shaky camera work; this is due to erm, ‘fluid movements’ on the most part or being hurried by three hundred others walking through the shot.

Firstly, a visit to our friends at Places & Spaces on Monday evening where this natty magazine rack from Droog caught our eye:

Along with these playful Upholstered pebbles:

Next up was a trip to Oxo Tower, with my walk there diverted up Marigold Alley. No, this is not a euphemism for a Stop & Search, the Thames Path is closed by Blackfriars Bridge and there actually is, believe it or not, a place called:

Eventually we made it into Designers Block to see the bright young things that could light up our design futures. Loved the space and how it was presented:

Our friends, the omni-present Show & Tell have to be mentioned here for their quirky 2D lamps (if we didn’t, life at the Studio would be a bit tenser!).

And we also liked My City by Jenny Walsh Design; always on the hunt for a good coffee table:

But our special mention goes to these sexy handlebars that really could be all the rage in china shops the world over:

Wednesday morning saw one of us on camera for Welsh TV at 100% Design. After filming, a quick run around the show unearthed this letter writing table from Pinch:

Also this great piece formed from concrete no less:

We loved this side table in Milan earlier this year, and were pleased to see it re-surface in London. With its magnetic lamp that allows for different lighting positions and walnut removable tray, this is both quirky and practical:

Now this next item we blogged earlier this month, and was here at 100% Design and again later at Skitsch on Brompton Road. We love this machine- the Ciclotte; form, function and just plain sexy:

Later on we hooked up with some of the guys from Co-Existence and Walter Knoll, for drinks and to see the launch of the ‘111 plastic bottle’ chair at Conran. Demonstrated here by Sir Terence himself:

Followed closely by Skitsch, more drinks and that bike again:

Then a small shuffle over to B&B Italia, to see the new Urquiola sofa, more drinks, Wallpaper collaboration and risqué film http://bit.ly/cWR358:

Had fun here as always; the showroom is breath-taking, nice to see some old friends and have a giggle:

Then ‘black cabbed’ it over to Established & Sons to see them take over the local boozer:

And a few more dinrks, tehn a qciuk spnaosht of the show. Vrrey durnk by now:

Finally, all sobered up, we managed to run into Tent before the chickens fled the coup:

And we managed to stay one step up from a splitting headache noticing this great chair/steps combo:

Although there wasn’t that much to write home about, this was an exception:

And to wrap things up, this neat DIY table unassembled:

And none too shabby when put together:

It’s always difficult to convey the feeling of being there in 2D photos and a bit of text, but all we can say is that London Design Festival was a joy to be at. Yes there is room for improvement, yes it could do with more British names at the forefront and yes there never enough time to get around everything. But yes it will improve, yes the British are there and yes it is definitely worth the effort to get around it.

“As if he needs help getting his voice heard!”

The lesser spotted @interiorporn, mouthing off on the way to Zona Tortona, Milano