This article is part of our special design report in the preview of the Milan design week.
The light that is devoured by lush fabrics or poured out of lamp heads is always a design star. With the Milan Design Week it is striking presence in the reflective surfaces of Michele de Lucchis revived mirrors for Memphis Milano or through the crystalline bodies of Kiki Gothis. It should also be thanked for unveiling the lush textures of textiles such as Richard Hutten's exuberant floor coverings for Jaipur carpets.
Design that ends positively
Michele de Lucchi-a member of the Memphis group-based collective in 1980 of Ettore Sottsass is of the opinion that it is time to bring the free spirit of the creative movement back, which with its Greek-Roman references and abundant colors and lush colors have raised between kitsch and innovation.
“We wanted to be extreme with Memphis and create the most lively atmosphere,” said de Lucchi, 73.
In 1985, under the name Memphis Milano, he designed two versions of a table mirror as a giveaway for the newly started women's magazine Donna. (The mirror, as he emphasized, is “something between fashion and design”.) Memphis then added the designs to his catalog.
Both mirrors will be revived by Italian radical design this year, which Memphis Milano bought in 2022. Dorian is a glass circle that rotates in a vertically painted wooden plate in the form of a square. Ionian is a square mirror that is weakened in a circle. Both have orange bases.
The mirrors will be presented from Tuesday to Sunday in the Salone del Mobile in Pavilion 22, Stand B30. Memphis.it. – Arlene Hirst
Form glass in family portraits
Kiki Gothi alluded to women in her own family when she designed her grace vase collection and while the Milan Design Week was shown fairly on the Alcova.
“The muses comprise the arts easier,” said the architect and designer born in Thessaloniki, who was born in Thessaloniki, Greece and lives and works in New York City. “But grace represent beauty, charm and joy in a way that is fluid and ethereal and allows that all types of femininity exist in them.”
This variety can be seen in the form and decoration of the objects associated with the qualities of some close relatives. The closest vase embodies one of Ms. Gothis's aunts, a large, professional businesswoman who loves fashion and jewelry. The red vase represents a grandmother who also described Mrs. Gothi rounded and “sensitively but very loud”. And the four -legged vase with its elaborate crown recognizes the triggering personality of her mother.
In order to create the jewelry-like shots on the tops of the vases, Ms. Gothi Rostrato used a technique that was developed on the Venetian island of Murano, in which melted glass is clamped and then cared for with small parts from fame or amber-colored glass.
The Gracy Collection is part of “A Human Touch”, an installation on the happy marriage of industry and art, which also includes the Osvaldo furniture collection of the Office of Squitible Space, a New York architectural studio.
The exhibition can be seen from Monday to Sunday in Villa Borsani, 148 via Umberto I, Varedo, Italy. kikigoti.com. – Yelena Moroz Alpert
Decor that should exist
The decision of Lucia Neamtu to design Spiegel was very strategic. She believed that the current offers in the category, especially large examples, were missing. She also knew that if she presented a 6 -foot mirror, “Selfies and Tag would record,” she said. This was exactly what happened when she showed Fair for the first time during the Milan Design Week on the Alcova Fair. “Everyone called me the mirror girl,” she recalled.
Ms. Neamtu was born in Moldova and grew up in Milan. She studied fashion design and interior design briefly and was accepted at Central Saint Martins in London for product design. But she found her own training in New York City, and there she settled.
“In Europe, we are taught that we as a designer have to learn how to do everything,” she said. “What I learned in America is that you can hire people to do things for you. You have a vision, you get a team. I found someone who makes 3-D for myself and I started to make furniture.”
For a long time fascinated by the marble stone fractures and craftsmen in Carrara, Italy, she wanted to make tangible objects that had been going on for generations. “That's why I chose stone,” she said. “There could be an earthquake or your house burns down, but stone will still be there.” Carrara sits near the Ligurian sea; The waves carved in their mirror constructions are said to be an interpretation of waves.
This year Ms. Neamtu will return to Alcova to show a new mirror, two tables, a floor lamp and a wall light. The lighting is a combination of marble and glass that is adopted by hand in Venice, and part of a larger collection that will start later a year.
The collection will be shown from Tuesday to Sunday in Alcova, Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, 48 via Vittorio Emanuele II, Varedo, Italy. Alcova.xyz. – – Rima Suqi
These carpets are an inspired bunch
Karl Fournier, co-founder of Studio Ko, an architecture company with offices in Paris and Marrakech, Morocco, usually does not find any design inspiration if he does homework with his son. But a broad notebook with blue lines and red edges could find its way into his carpets for the carpet company Beni.
“My idea was to make a design out of it and bring it to the traditional way of weaving and see what happens,” he said.
Mr. Fournier founded Studio Ko with Olivier Marty 25 years ago, and both men count themselves under a generation for which ideas come to mind and not on the screen.
Your 10-part crossing collection, which is shown in Milan's Design Week, is an ode to the extremely old-fashioned, which means more than just notebooks.
Some of the designs were carried out by the 500-year-old method for the production of R'Bati carpets that use a dense node structure to improve the clarity of sensitive linear patterns.
“Fit the difference between a hand-drawn charcoal sketch and a finely colored illustration of the front-sowbohl, but you enable stricter lines and more sophisticated shades,” said Robert Wright, a founder of Beni that is based in Morocco. The designers immerse themselves in another R'Bati technology in peppers and saffron.
This remarkable level of detail enables this carpet to be “a little quiet”, said Fournier. “You are not too heavy or full of information,” you can imagine in any kind of interior.
The carpets can be seen in a former textile shop in 14 Cesare Correnti in a studio. Benirugs.com. – Yelena Moroz Alpert
Carpets with sense of humor
The last thing you want to see on a carpet is a banana – that is, unless Richard Hutten dropped it there. The Dutch designer, who is known for his sense of humor, has replaced the ancient craftsmanship of hand-woven Indian carpets with its nine-member collection for Jaipur-carpets entitled “Playing with tradition”.
Mr. Hutten began with classic flower motifs in Indian carpets, the beauty of which he admired, added what he referred to as the “additional layer” in order to make them contemporary and optimistic.
His first experiments were to fall into balloon and egg shapes. These were literally flat. “Every knot is like a pixel of a picture,” he said, sprinkling about the traditional pattern. (The lively colors of the confetti are reminiscent of a Holi festival.) In another carpet, a variety of cubic shapes seem to float above the botanical background. “Only very strong shapes worked in my concept,” he said.
The carpets made of wool and Silch are knotted by hand in the state of Rajasthan.
“Playing with tradition” will be exhibited via Marco Minghetti from Monday to Sunday in the Jaipur Carpet Showroom at 8 a.m. Jaipurrrugs.com. – Yelena Moroz Alpert
A blanket for your wild side
Liucija Kostiva's secret garden ceiling actually contains a secret. At a glance, it seems to be a beautiful Jacquard throw made of cotton, with a pattern that is inspired by Persian carpet motifs and consists of various geometric forms that are supposed to cause the topiaries of European gardens.
The secret is cleverly hidden behind the larger shapes – but users have to distort the ceiling in order to experience them as intended. Simply put: You have to use scissors to cut a vertical line through the middle of each top diet to reveal the “secret animal” hidden underneath, which is surrounded by an edge after the operation. The creatures include chickens, roosters, snakes, pigs, foxes, crows and rabbits; Instructions for adapting the ceiling are included in the packaging.
According to Ms. Kotiva, a textile designer who currently lives in Moliacalism, a village in Lithuania, gardens play a crucial role in Persian carpets. They are a “symbol for a place where you can come to connect with yourself again,” she said.
Your apparently complicated, multi -layered design is woven in a pass through a loom. It took about 10 months to create the program and web technology, and to develop the technology to ensure that separating the yarn would not leave any holes or messy places. (The ceiling is machine washable and Ms. Kotiva said the yarns do not fall off or stretch.)
She expressed hope that buyers would not rethink it. “You shouldn't take it seriously. It connects to the wild side again,” she said. “But yes, if they don't like snakes, it could be a problem.”
The secret garden ceiling will be exhibited from Monday to Sunday at the “Tactile Baltics” exhibition in the Palazzo Litta, 24 Corso Magenta. Kostiva.com, tactilebaltics.com. – Rima Suqi