The Dezeen team have been reporting live from Milan design week (15-19 April). Read on for all the coverage from the fifth day (Friday 19 April).
6:00pm Each year we try to capture the Dezeen team out in Milan in a group shot but with 24 of us here this year – at any given point somewhere across the city exploring Milan design week – that has proved impossible!
Below is the best we could do, featuring – left to right – Dezeen design editor Jennifer Hahn, deputy editor Cajsa Carlson, design and interiors reporter Jane Englefield and editorial director Max Fraser enjoying more ice cream in front of Alcova’s Villa
Bagatti Valsecchi.
The red protuberances from the first floor windows behind them are part of the WAKE installation by UMPRUM students (The Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague).
Other red things… are our feet! Dezeen digital editor Rupert Bickersteth has been tracking the team’s step count, and the editorial contributors to this live coverage alone have clocked up more than 628,000 steps combined (according to their phones, and Bickersteth’s maths).
It’s been our pleasure to bring you Dezeen’s biggest live coverage ever, across 5 days, publishing more than 30 dedicated articles about projects and exhibitions (and more yet to come in the following days), and with 79 entries here in the Dezeen LIVE – all with the goal of celebrating the global design community with you. Grazie!
Catch up on everything that happened this week:
Day one from Milan design week 2024
Day two from Milan design week 2024
Day three from Milan design week 2024
Day four from Milan design week 2024
5:30pm Designer Yves Salomon has unveiled its collaboration with Chapo Creations, a collection of five furniture pieces created by interior designer Pierre Chapo, each upholstered in upcycled intarsia shearling.
With sustainability in mind, the designs use no glues or permanent fastenings and the shearling pieces were recycled off-cuts. – Jennifer Hahn
5:15pm Bentley Home has unveiled six new pieces of furniture at Milan design week, including the Wilton desk, which is one of the first Bentley Home pieces designed for home offices.
The desk is presented at Bentley Home Atelier at Corso Venezia in a desert-themed setting that draws from the Italian region of Salento.
The desk is shown alongside a new modular sofa called Loftus, which features integrated side tables in marble or leather.
The desk was designed by Francesco Forcellini, while the sofa is by Federico Peri, both of whom worked closely with the Bentley Motors design team in Crewe, UK.
5:00pm A hybrid between a fair and a collective exhibition, Capsule Plaza has returned to Milan design week at Spazio Maiocchi to bring together designers and companies spanning interiors and architecture, beauty and technology, innovation and craft.
Italian design brand Poltronova collaborated with Crosby Studios founder Harry Nuriev to reimagine the Saratoga sofa, 60 years after Lella and Massimo Vignelli designed it.
Nuriev took inspiration “from the mundane and unpoetic” and presented a version wrapped in taped-up bin bags.
The 1978 Lancia Sibilo show car designed by Marcello Gandini for Bertone, is also on display at Capsule Plaza, as part of the Lopresto collection.
Elsewhere an installation by Alaska Alaska— a London-based design and creative studio founded by Virgil Abloh and now directed by Tawanda Chiweshe and Francisco Gaspar — provides the scenography for Nike’s Alphafly 3 presentation.
Capsule also presented a collaboration with K67 Berlin, who recover and restore version of a 1966 kiosk design – called K67 – by Slovenian architect and designer Saša J. Mächtig.
Based on polyfibre-reinforced modules, the flexible design of the units enables them to serve numerous functions, and at Capsule Plaza several kiosks are being used as a magazine kiosk, matcha bar, information desk, DJ booth and – in collaboration with luxury skincare La Prairie – as a flower stand.
Hydro is exhibiting objects made entirely from aluminium scrap.
Titled 100R, the exhibit features objects by seven designers made from Hydro’s recycled aluminium product, which was designed to have a record-low carbon footprint – Rupert Bickersteth
Watch the Instagram Reel that Dezeen Studio made for Hydro now ›
4:00pm Milan-based architecture studio ADML Circle showcased Leaveitbe during Milan design week, an installation by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.
“The architect’s role is the shepherd of space”
Installed in ADML Circle’s space on Via Varese in Milan, it was made up of pieces of leftover wood from construction in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, which have been suspended and appear to float within a wooden frame.
The sculptural piece was created in response to an earlier work by ADML Circle founder Michele de Lucchi, which is showcased alongside it.
“Leave it be was designed as a barrier, to create a secret space that treats emptiness as a valuable resource,” ADML Circle’s Pico de Lucchi told Dezeen deputy editor Cajsa Carlson.
“It looks at the architect’s role as the shepherd of space and aims to create a positive emptiness.”
3:30pm There have been increasing grumblings about the length of queues towards the tail end of this year’s Milan design week.
At the world’s biggest design fair you always expect to queue, and especially when the weather is fine, but even so waiting over two hours in line seems beyond the limit for many and has become a topic of conversation as press and the general public navigate getting into all the exhibitions and presentations.
3:00pm Following Dezeen social editor Clara Finnigan’s preview of Artemest’s second edition of L’Apartamento (see 10:15 entry from day three), you can now skip the queue and see more from inside in our recently published Instagram Reel.
2:45pm There is always time for ice cream! No points for guessing that one of the flavours Dezeen’s Cajsa Carlson chose is chocolate, but what about the other one? Entries on the back of a postcard to Dezeen HQ.
2:30pm Dezeen design editor Jennifer Hahn reports that the social media “coquette bow” trend has made it to Milan in the form of candlesticks, chairs and cutlery by Worn Studio.
2:15pm Also at Alcova’s Villa Bagatti Valsecchi with Dezeen’s Jennifer Hahn and Jane Englefield is Dezeen deputy editor Cajsa Carlson.
The three dove into design studio Objects of Common Interest’s squishy garden pavilion.
Alcova has become one of the most widely followed projects in the Fuorisalone of Milan design week, regularly attracting over 90,000 visitors.
Made from PVC and metal, the Objects of Common Interest pavilion provided a fun distraction for visitors from the queue snaking into the exhibition space’s main building.
Athens and New York-based studio Objects of Common Interest are also showing squishy and rubbery furniture, illuminated by colourful lights, at Alcova’s second location at the Villa Borsani.
1.30pm The sun has returned at Alcova! Everyone is frolicking in the sun outside Villa Bagatti Valsecchi.
1:00pm From Alcova, Dezeen’s Jane Englefield reports that knobbly bowls and translucent cutlery come together at La Cocina – an installation of functional but decorative kitchen pieces by Colombian designer Natalia Criado.
Criado is another designer showing at Alcova’s Villa Borsani, in a kitchen-style room.
12:30pm House of Switzerland is a collective exhibition at the Casa degli Artisti on Corso Garibaldi which brings together emerging designers, studios, universities, brands, and galleries from across Switzerland.
Dezeen’s US editor Ben Dreith reports that the 2024 edition has been curated around the theme of joy – perhaps not something often associated with the stereotypically rigid and serious aesthetic of Swiss design and architecture.
The exhibition aims to “revoke the singular perception of Swiss design, encouraging us to become captivated by its playfulness with a pure and open naivety, embracing the spirit of the playground”.
As a result, the show features lot of interactive exhibits involving ropes, swings, ladders, and seesaws but unfortunately someone went too hard on the seesaw and broke it!
Many exhibitors collaborated with Swiss brands, such as an exhibit using tarpaulin from recycled bag manufacturer Frietag.
11:45am Following Englefield’s trip to the Patrick Caroll exhibition of knitted “paintings” at Milan’s JW Anderson store (see 10:45am entry from day three), you can now read the full write up below:
11:15am Photographed by Dezeen’s Jane Englefield, who writes: Jennifer Hahn has hit Alcova’s Villa Borsani with the entirety of her Milan design week luggage as the team prepares to leave the city.
She’s donning the dad-at-an-art-gallery front backpack look, after reports of a visitor smashing a handful of one of the exhibitor’s glass flowers here yesterday.
*update* Here is a picture of the bathtub full of glass flowers, of which a few were damaged earlier by a less careful backpack wearer.
Find out more about Alcova on Dezeen Events Guide ›
11:00am Dezeen’s Jennifer Hahn reports: the design world congregated at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana last night to pay tribute to Italian design icon Gaetano Pesce, who died earlier this month aged 84.
The occasion was the newly opened “Nice to See You” exhibition, conceived before his death, which is showing Pesce’s most recent works from 2023-2024, some completed just weeks before the exhibition was originally due to open.
Outside the historic library, there is a new monumental installation of a man crouching on all fours that was designed to reflect the “tiredness of the so-called stronger sex”.
There were speeches and standing ovations in honour of the “maestro”, with attendees including Pesce’s family and team alongside designers including Fabio Novembre.
10:30am Carlo Ratti returns to Brera Botanical Garden with sunRICE, an installation of sculpture made of rice husk that demonstrate the potential of the material.
The biodegradable objects can be used as fertiliser after the exhibition concludes. Chef Niko Romito has also baked rice “cookies” for the occasion, available to try at the site – Jane Englefield
10:00am Those in need of some rest and recuperation from the frenzy of Milan design week, writes Dezeen’s Max Fraser, have been enjoying the calm space of the Bocci apartment, a permanent showcase for the Canadian brand’s lighting collections.
The space underwent a makeover for this year’s event with walls hand painted by skilled artisans Pictalab to evoke velvet and parchment.
As well as impressive clusters of their pendants hanging in the various rooms, Bocci was also launching 14p, their first portable table light made from sepia-toned cast-glass.
Fans of the beautiful Bocci tote bag (launched last year as part of the company’s rebrand by Studio Frith) could pick up a new red and blue colourway for 2024. The Dezeen team, already heavy users of the 2023 bag, are thrilled!
9:30am Morning! Welcome to the fifth and final day of Dezeen’s reporting from Milan design week.
This week more than 20 of the Dezeen team have been out and about in Milan, soaking up all that Salone del Mobile and the wider Fuorisalone have to offer.
Among them, Dezeen’s editorial director Max Fraser, editor-at-large Amy Frearson, digitial editor Rupert Bickersteth, deputy editor Cajsa Carlson, US editor Ben Dreith, design editor Jennifer Hahn, social editor Clara Finnigan, design and interiors reporter Jane Englefield and editorial assistant Starr Charles have been reporting from the 62nd edition of the world’s biggest design fair.
Our live coverage from Milan wouldn’t have been possible without all the work also going on from the dozens of Dezeeners in our London HQ, and in Shanghai and the US where we also have teams.
This week we have partnered with brands on exclusive video content, co-hosted parties, thrown a Dezeen Awards dinner at Villa Necchi, moderated panel discussions, interviewed designers and architects, attended exhibitions, installations, previews and product launches – and we’ve drunk a few negronis at Milan’s legendary Bar Basso too!
There would be nothing to report if it weren’t for the wonderful designers, artists, architects and multi-disciplinary practitioners who bring their creativity and their creations to Milan every year – so here’s to them, and our final day covering all the goings-on across the city. Let’s go!
Catch up on everything that has happened so far this week:
Day one from Milan design week 2024
Day two from Milan design week 2024
Day three from Milan design week 2024
Day four from Milan design week 2024
To keep you up to date, Dezeen Events Guide has created a Milan design week digital guide highlighting the key events at the festival.
See Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest information you need to know to attend the event, as well as a list of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.
All times are London time.
The lead image is by Jennifer Hahn.
