ONE WEEK ABOUT Milano Design Week 2025
Day 4 – report by David Heldt
For lunch we sought coolness in the basement of bistro cafe La Pagnotta, filled with Milanese, I learned later, because of their delicious pasta. The salone here seems far away, but nothing could be further from the truth. Outside on the street, it looks like a carnival. What I wondered today is: what are we looking at?
People are walking around, looking at their phones, filming or photographing. Through sophisticated staging of objects, creating a queue, you automatically pull out your phone when it’s your turn to see the expo, to capture it.
The Hermès exhibition at Brera was sophisticated, we captured it all, beautifully done. At the German brand Dornbracht, I marveled at the art of faucet making. For me, the beauty is mainly in the heaviness of the material that you feel when you turn the faucet. But the flow and heaviness of the water, by mixing or not mixing it with air, has fascinated me. My hand washing will never be the same again.
Yesterday my blog ended up lining up at Google’s presentation. Beautiful installation by artist Lachlan Turczan in collaboration with the company’s design team. The title Making the Invisible Visible caught me off guard, I had expected it to be about making visible what Google collects from its users, but it was patches of fog where skylights challenged visitors to walk through them and move the beams of light. Very artfully done, but also felt like a smoke screen, seduction, branding.
Cassina’s 60th anniversary will be celebrated with an impressive show in a theater designed by Studio Formafantasma. Nature has retaken our designed world. Lynx, wild boar and cranes have descended among the modern furniture of this iconic brand. In line with the Oltre Terra exhibition currently on display at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the animals are life-size, uncomfortably real-looking. The contrast between Cassina’s modern world and the wilderness is uncomfortable. What distinguishes us from them? We watch them, but not as in a zoo or within their natural habitat, but within our own habitat. The animals come to visit and observe us in our habitat, and look how the humans behave in a special way.
Now on to Masterly, more on that tomorrow.
Photography: David Heldt
