
This was the 58th edition of Salone del Mobile.Milano. Of the 58, I’ve attended approximately 20 and this was my favorite one so far. By any objective measure this Salone was a huge success. Here are some stats as proof:
>386,236 attendees over 6 days from 181 countries;
>2,418 exhibitors from 44 countries (43 foreign countries + Italy);
>550 young designers (under 35) participated in SaloneSatellite.
The above stats apply only to Salone del Mobile.Milano, but to most of us visitors, the total event taking place in Milan during this time period comprises two separate but related events, Salone del Mobile.Milano, the trade show at the Fiera (fairgrounds) Milano in Rho, a suburb of Milan and Milan Design Week, a celebration of design throughout the city of Milan.


It wasn’t always thus. The event now known as Milan Design Week started as separate ad hoc events in the “downtown” showrooms of some of the Italian companies that were present at the fair – an opportunity to invite fair goers to their permanent showrooms in the city.
But the idea of taking advantage of the presence of the many visitors to Salone gradually spread until it reached critical mass and became formally known as Milan Design Week. Businesses all around Milan that are taking part in Milan Design Week display a yellow “Fuori Salone” flag on the sidewalk near their doors (fuori means out or outside, so “Outside Salone”)
In a conference with the international press corps, Claudio Luti, the president of Salone del Mobile.Milano was asked about the relationship between Salone and Milan Design Week. He said, “For many years we worked to involve the whole city of Milan. This year we’ve really done it.”
He spoke the truth! The week was kicked off with a special concert and a gala dinner at Teatro alla Scala announcing a strategic partnership between La Scala and Salone that will continue through 2021 when Salone celebrates its 60th anniversary. In addition there were major exhibitions around the city: the Triennale was timed to coincide with Salone (read more), and a Salone sponsored exhibition called AQUA was framed as “Leonardo’s Water Vision”
Conca dell’Incoronata are the wooden lock gates designed by Leonardo and built in 1496. They can still be seen, although they no longer function as locks. But the Aqua Exhibition was erected nearby and it was a huge attraction. From April 6 to April 14 it averaged over 2,000 visitors a day providing a site-specific immersive experience. It was sponsored by Salone del Mobile.Milano and developed in partnership with Balich Worldwide Shows. In it, water plays the starring role as an element that Leonardo explored as an artist, an architect, a scientist and an engineer.




There was also an installation devoted to the Renaissance genius at the fairgrounds – “DE-SIGNO. The Art of Italian Design Before and After Leonardo.” Curated by Davide Rampello and beautifully narrated by Diego Abatantuono, DE-SIGNO compared and contrasted the savoir-faire of today’s businesses with Leonardo’s design skills.


The finale to Milan Design Week and the Salone was an evening event at Milan’s city hall, Palazzo Marino. It was hosted by Milan’s Mayor, Giuseppe Sala, and marked the official close of both Salone and design week.
During the course of the last evening, the Salone del Mobile.Milano presented a Special Lifetime Award to Mario Bellini, as a thank you and in recognition of his huge contribution to Italian Design and to the Salone through his collaboration with so many exhibiting companies.

In the meantime, every day was packed with too much to see – too much ground to cover at the Fiera itself. If you’ve never been there you should know that the fairgrounds itself is huge. There are roughly 8 separate buildings running east to west with four on each side of a central 2-story passage named “Corso Italia.” Corso Italia is at least a kilometer long and maybe a mile, I don’t know for sure, but my feet will swear it’s a mile.
The buildings are divided into “Halls” with 2 of the 8 being 3-story buildings with 2 halls on each of 2 floors, so in total there are 20 halls with exhibits to visit if you want to cover the entire show. Most people pick and choose.
Euroluce (lighting) and Workplace design alternate every other year with Kitchen and Bathroom design. Of my 20 or so visits to Salone, I can only remember attending the Kitchen and Bath year once…I’m just a workplace and lighting kinda guy.
This year I made a point of asking people I encountered what they hoped to gain from attending Salone. Not surprisingly, the most common answer can be distilled to one word, “trends.” The second most common answer can be netted out as “innovation.”
The evolution of furniture design is incremental with the best realization of small changes often being seen as innovation and leading to trends as others copy and reinterpret. Big leaps are rare indeed.
Right now, there is a great deal of innovation in lighting design due to the rapid uptake of LED as the preferred light source. Euroluce was alight (haha) with new designs that would have been impossible to achieve were it not for LED.
Generalizing the trends from the thousands of products experienced at Salone is endlessly interesting whether you’re talking about trends in color or the use of lounge furniture in office settings. And with 2,418 companies doing their best to dazzle there is, as I said before, too much to see and too much to ground to cover.
In this issue I’m sharing images of a few of the things that caught my eye with an attempt to focus on the companies our readers know and love. In future issues I hope to take a deeper look at some of my favorite products, and the designers and companies that brought them to market.
I’d like to mention that most of my visits to Salone were spent as an American office furniture manufacturer. It’s only since 2013 that I’ve attended as a member of the international press.
During these latter years I have experienced the professionalism, care and kindness of the press hospitality group under the direction of Patrizia Ventura. She and her team, along with their press agents from the various countries do a phenomenal job of making life as easy as possible for the press visitors from around the world. In the case of the U.S. press corps that includes the staff from Novità, who make sure we’re aware of the many opportunities to attend special events or for interviews with Salone principals. A big thank you to them all.
In the gallery below are some of the things I saw in more or less alphabetical order by company name.