Milan Design Week: a conscious approach to design
Milan Design Week 2024, under the captivating theme *Materia (Matter) Natura (Nature)*, transformed the city’s streets into a vibrant, living design laboratory. Designers, architects, schools, and institutions from around the world gathered to explore new approaches to design, all focused on building a more responsible future.
Exploring Sustainable Innovations: Highlights of Design Week
Throughout the city, a series of events, exhibitions, and installations addressed a wide range of topics, capturing our attention with fresh perspectives and creative solutions.
Here’s a selection of notable highlights:
- Reusing Industrial Waste: Hydro showcased furniture made from repurposed industrial aluminum waste.
- Circular Economy and Rental Concepts: ECAL x FREITAG introduced a unique model of circular economy, exploring rental concepts for single-use goods.
- Innovative Use of Natural Materials: Central Saint Martins students demonstrated innovative dyeing techniques with natural materials, while designer Renaud Defrancesco crafted stools from wood shavings and potato starch.
- Biomimicry: BioWdesign presented designs inspired by nature’s structures and principles, demonstrating biomimicry’s potential in responsible design.
Embracing Minimalist Design
To let materials truly shine, the design approach at Milan Design Week embraced purity and minimalism, exploring simple geometries that fulfill essential functions (Henry Timi). These materials, presented in a variety of forms such as raw substances, fragrances, textures, messages, and sounds, created an immersive sensory experience for attendees.
This edition of Fuorisalone reaffirmed Milan’s status as the world capital of design and proved that design can be both aesthetically appealing and environmentally responsible.
