Some of the most engaging events at this year’s Salone del Mobile took place outside the hallowed institutions of designer culture and commerce, and spilled out onto the street. Many of them also took place outside the traditional bounds of what constitutes design, but this is no a bad thing when you’ve just spent eight hours looking at chairs. Two initiatives, the Public Design Festival and Milanomifamale (Milan hurts me) provided a diverse mix of service, exhibition and entertainment throughout the period of the fair. The Public Design Festival, organised by Esterni, was organised with the blessing and cooperation of the Commune di Milano. They signed over a number of parking spaces to individuals and organisations who have replaced the cars with activities chosen through a competition. These ranged from a public dancefloor to a “Person Parking” facility (OK, this is sort of a chair) to a tailor’s shop.
The latter, organised by American artist Nova Jiang, provided free brightly coloured cotton jersey garments to visitors, each designed and made on the spot, based on their existing clothes and with a different colour for each day. Nova explains: “it is partly about providing a uniform, and partly about celebrating the difference in people’s clothing. People have been so friendly – the shop next door provided electricity for our sewing machine and an engineer even came to fix our treadle sewing machine for free.” It’s a little hit-and-miss – the “Right to Dry” installation (provision of a public clothes-line) makes one start to wonder what proposals were turned down, but who wouldn’t want to take a ride on a giant scissor crane in the middle of the city?
Milanomifamale was more of a guerrilla affair, with activities popping up in various places, including the chance to dance with a designer outside the Sala Di Tango, compete in origami boat races on the canal, or take a trip up a virtual Torre Branca. Every year I meet people who say that there should be more quality control and just control in general about what events are taking place and where. With all this enthusiasm and energy, I can’t see why you would want to do anything other than applaud these initiatives that bring design, in some form or other, to the streets.
