Anne Pieterse about Routes to Roots, LAMPO and Stecca 3.0
ONE WEEK ABOUT Milan Design Week 2024
Day 2 – report by Anne Pieterse
This morning I went out with the Isola map, after selecting the places I want to visit, the adventure begins. For some visitors, the Salone has been a household name for more than 20 years, many people walk around here as if the city is a kind of second home, the regular company outing of independent design-minded Holland. Not for me, so I grab the map and start looking for the gems. In search, because the map I got in my hands was in no way an accurate representation of the locations. Few of the flags on the map are in the right place, so even google maps had to help me navigate the maze that Milan can be if you haven’t walked around it for the umpteenth time.
The first venue I walked into was immediately cool, Routes to Roots, a presentation where local craftsmanship, tradition and innovation come together to present design from the Middle East and North Africa. Mina Abouzahra is one of the participating designers with the work “Hieja, super power chair?”, a spin on the Rietveld chair, partly covered with a pattern of tiny beads, inspired by Amazigh (Berber) culture. The presentation felt like a whole, the works of all these different designers, from all these different countries told a story together.
Continuing on my way with the map -three wrong turns due to incorrect flags- I went to LAMPO, where there would be several presentations I wanted to visit. Upon entering, it was an immediate switch, it was so busy that I couldn’t really see anything properly because of the chaos. Many individual products were lined up close to one another, all super beautiful objects, such as Nicolette de Waart’s Berry lamp. However, because there was so much side by side, it was difficult to see all the products separately, so the maze of streets outside continued inside.
There were also certainly presentations to be seen with a little more space around the objects, such as Marc de Groot’s presentation, which was able to go full height with his Stardust lamps, grabbing the attention they deserve. The lamps are constructed from a flat piece of material, which he manually folds back into a sphere.
Right next to Marc, Iris Nijenhuis showed some of her work, which is made up of a huge number of individual puzzle pieces. Together, they make a whole that gets body, making it hard to imagine that -just like Marc’s- it is also constructed from flat pieces of material.
After LAMPO, I went to Stecca 3.0, where the presentation new store 2.0 is for the Salone. There, the Nieuwe Instituut facilitated a collaboration between Human Material Loop, Woo Jin Joo and hairdresser Alberto Fucci. Together, they show that you don’t just have to be a passive consumer, you can be the creator and the material yourself. After a 50-minute haircut, I was able to contribute my hair to the project, from which a natural yarn will later be made. Next to the hairdresser’s chair, a group of people are working on a collaborative artwork where human hair is incorporated into a fabric tapestry. Don’t be alarmed they say, it may feel a little oily.
The project takes you into a vision of the future that they are working on immediately. It’s not speculation, they’re already doing it – definitely worth a look!
At the end of the day, I went to the opening of SOLIDIFIED, where you walk out of the hustle and bustle of the street through the courtyard, and can find designers Jesse Visser, Rive Roshan, Umut Yamac, Rick Tegelaar and Form Editions inside. The presentation is a very nice place to walk around, each studio has its own presentation in the space, but besides that, the work fits well together and forms a whole.
Looking back on the day, it actually feels a bit like I have been walking here for 20 years as well, I was able to talk Dutch for 90% of the day today, with the people I also see in the Netherlands. Perhaps I should try a little harder to discover the unfamiliar works and studios in the coming days, but where do you start if you don’t know the city and the map doesn’t help you?