Milan Design Week opens

Milan Design Week opened on April 21, with the Salone del Mobile fair at Fiera Milano Rho and hundreds of satellite events spreading across the city. (salonemilano.it 1) (salonemilano.it 2) The 64th edition of Salone del Mobile runs through April 26 at Rho, with more than 1,900 exhibitors, 36.6% of them from abroad, across more than 169,000 square meters of exhibition space. (salonemilano.it) This year also brings back the biennial EuroCucina and International Bathroom Exhibition, while the city-side Fuorisalone program started on April 20 and stretches through districts including Brera, Tortona, Isola and 5VIE. (salonemilano.it) (archiproducts.com) The split between the trade fair and the city festival has turned Milan into two events at once: a business marketplace at the fairgrounds and a weeklong public circuit of installations, brand activations and temporary exhibitions in palazzi, courtyards and former industrial sites. (visitmilano.org) (archdaily.com) That format is pulling more fashion and luxury houses deeper into design week, with brands using immersive sets and hospitality spaces as much as furniture launches to reach visitors. Architectural Digest and Miele, for example, opened the AD Salotto at Marchesi 1824 in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II on April 21 as a public café and meeting place from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. (mieleusa.com) Some of the most talked-about work this week is explicitly theatrical. Baccarat’s “Crystal Crypt,” open April 21 to 25 in Brera, is billed by the brand as an immersive installation by Emmanuelle Luciani built around crystal, film, choreography, scenography and sound. (baccarat.com) (archiproducts.com) Elsewhere, institutions are using the week to open places that are usually harder to access. The Bank of Italy’s Milan branch is hosting “The Architectures of Trust and the Value of Money,” a free photographic exhibition from April 21 to 24 in its public hall, tracing financial spaces from antiquity to the proposed digital euro. (bancaditalia.it) Archives are part of the program too. On April 24, “Common Archive – La Notte Bianca del Progetto” is set to open about 150 design archives across Milan, including home-studios linked to Gae Aulenti, Vico Magistretti and Franco Albini, for a single evening from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. (domusweb.it) (designboom.com) The result is a design week where the object is still there, but often inside a larger scene. In Milan this week, the chair, lamp or glass is increasingly being introduced through a set, a story and a place to linger. (archdaily.com) (buro247.me)