The synergy of group presentation SOLIDIFIED
ONE WEEK ABOUT Milan Design Week 2024
Day 5 – report by David Heldt
The weather, the location, the restaurant nearby, side issues that can make or break the week. You can present such good work, if the side issues don’t help, a week like this becomes a tough task. Oh yes, and the people you present with. In the group presentation SOLIDIFIED the synergy of the group makes a big difference, at least for the exhibitors themselves. But I also hear from the visitors that the beautiful cohesion in the presentation stands out. Funny that the designers never worked together before. Many hours of video calls preceded this salone to get the layout right, a delicate process for a group of designers who know exactly how they want it. The process brought us close together and you can tell. I call that a gentle method of curating; not a top-down process where someone makes all the decisions, but a social process where the decisions are made collectively and something grows that continues beyond the exhibition. The exhibitors, Umut Yamac, Jesse Visser, Rick Tegelaar, Rive Roshan (Golnar Roshan, Ruben de la Rive Box), and Form Editions (Marc Meeuwissen, Collin Velkoff, Frank Penders, Studio Verbaan, Rive Roshan) have gotten to know each other well recently, guiding visitors past each other’s work as if it were their own.
How is it that those designers of SOLIDIFIED are active late into the night from gallery CIRCOLO, Tom Dixon to Bar Basso, and in the morning fresh and fruity showing journalists around? What Italians have known for a long time, and have developed to lonely heights, is the importance of good coffee. I’m not writing this because I like to mention Rocket Espresso Milano, our coffee sponsor, but in doing so, I’m shedding a little light on this week’s success.
Photography: Ronald Smits, Wouter Smolders