These Were New at Triennale Milano 2022

 For any given year, the Triennale Design Museum has always been an unmissable part of our itinerary during Milan Design Week. Located inside the Palace of Art building, the Triennale allows visitors to explore excellence in design through various points of view – all part of a program that interweaves permanent exhibitions with ad hoc exhibition events. Changing the topics covered every year; thereby renewing and transforming itself. 

This year, we got to see, among others, Driade by Fabio Novembre, Memphis Again by Ettore Sottsass, and Mathieu Lehanneur’s State of the World.

Driade on stage at Triennale. Art directed by Fabio Novembre, the Italian architect and designer uses furniture design here to tell intense and fascinating stories in which the protagonist is often the human figure. Featuring Marcelo Burlon, Sfera Ebbasta, Omar Hassan, and Pow3R alongside their designs.

 

Forest Tales is an exhibition presented by the American Hardwood Export Council and curated by Studio Swine. It displays a collection of furniture designed during the pandemic and made from three beautiful and sustainable hardwoods from the American forests. The notion of shifting perspectives is integral to both form and content of the installation, which is not only a showcase of creativity, but an argument against waste in design, a plea for a more thoughtful choice of materials, and a challenge to the status quo.

Through a sinusoidal, luminous line of glass, How Deep is Time confronts our human scale with various projections about rising sea levels. Linked to climate change and the melting of the polar ice caps and continental glaciers, the increase in sea levels is currently estimated between 90 centimetres and nearly 3 metres by the year 2100. Regardless of the variations and the calculation methods, this impending submersion is indeed real and that is what this installation brings to light.

Mathieu Lehanneur’s State of the World installation at Triennale Design Museum is a retrospection on the 2020 global pandemic crisis which took a toll on the lives of close to 3 million people and how all the countries synchronously reacted to the possibility of death. The installation is a freeze frame of all living humans today in over 200 countries, illustrated in a collection of stained aluminium sculptures that arise from three-dimensional population pyramids of different countries. These decorative shapes are designed in sync with the demographic data provided by United Nations. In all, a reminder that you are still alive and part of the bigger picture.

Most architects and designers are familiar with the Memphis project. Directed and curated by Christoph Radl and designed by Ettore Sottsass, Memphis Again presents more than two-hundred pieces of furniture and objects in the most diverse selection of materials (wood, plastic, laminate, glass, ceramic, porcelain, silver, steel, fabric) produced between 1981 and 1986 for the Memphis collection.

With music by Seth Troxler, the objects and furniture displayed in an almost fashion-show like chronological order and arrangement, and quotes by critics, architects, and designers projected on the walls, the space had the feel of a hip nightclub. 

Stay tuned as we bring you more from Milan Design Week 2022.

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