Settings are like the packaging of the product, the skin of the object: it’s what catches our interest and the visitors’ eyes. Evocative, sober, sparkling, familiar or aseptic, the ambiance of design is generated by strategic choices of the installation, which is first of all a communication tool, like graphic design or the brand image. It’s not casual that, over the years, several designers have curated for renowned companies both the product’s concept and the setting it was placed in, which is the setting, the “unicum” of the image, as Patricia Urquiola did for Moroso and Ferruccio Laviani for Kartell.
During Fuorisalone 2007, Moroso was led into a white, softened and suspended world, almost a cloud, created by the poetic and typically Japanese touch of Tokujin Yoshioka: a surreal and intangible set where the Eastern manual ability and patience was combined with three million transparent straws that became structures.
Let’s notice a subtle relationship also with the dematerialized living space designed by Jean Nouvel for Corian DuPont. The French architect, always clever with light, faced an immaterial material. With the irregular, sweet and white Corion, Nouvel suggested the idea of a loft where just light and shade, matter and absence, dialogue in a game of poetic references and translucent effects with extreme peaks in the kitchen area. If white was a leitmotiv at this year’s Forniture Fair and Fuorisalone - from the glossy white Kartell stand to the organic white comeback of MDF - a second main theme of the settings presented in 2007 could be seen in the use of semi-finished products for the stands’ setting. From the white plastic tubes with an important section chosen by Kartell for the perimeter of the Fair stand to the straws - tubes with a smaller section - used by Moroso at the Milan showroom in via Pontaccio, and the silver “garden” set up by Lexus with the aid of some sort of plastic that looked like the one at the building sites’ premises, this time with the shiny shades of the future.
We feel to mention the Underconstruction setting for Paola Lenti, where the serial trait was combined with design: an independent living unit made of wood and glass (Planit®) created by Pilcher with an outdoor garden and interiors that ranged from furniture to lighting and advanced domotics, the result of the synergy between various companies.
LoftCube was presented for the first time by Werner Aisslinger in Berlin, back in 2003, and this year was set up again with an updated version: an autonomous and light living unit that can be placed on the buildings’ roofs as well as on the beach - a serial house without forgetting design.
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