FuoriSalone 2021 at 5Vie: to understand how design works

Between Carrobbio and Cordusio, in the most historic Milan of the 5Vie, during this FuoriSalone 2021 new companies to keep an eye on, minimal installations and a beautiful reflection on the culture of the twentieth century. Because we come from there

A reasoned guide would have recommended starting the 5Vie tour from Carrobbio. Mandatory stops are the Jorge Penadés exhibition curated by Maria Cristina Didero, Davide Groppi, Orografie at Palazzo Litta, where they came from the ethereal installation by Aires Mateus A beach in the Baroque.

And if by chance you were lucky enough to be in the area on Saturday, in the late afternoon, you cannot have missed the performance of the social designer Sara Ricciardi, in a version that cannot be more theatrical and performing. Because the design is serious but the project adapts to the context with great freedom.

Looks like magic! by Jorge Penadés

A performance by the Spanish designer Jorge Penadés that lasted the whole week of the FuoriSalone. The curator Maria Cristina Didero relies on Penades' curious gaze, on her research on recycling and on the daily and unnoticed waste of materials. It is the eye of the Millennial, programmed to see more and to challenge inattention. Penadés looked into the collection baskets of industrial dryers: you already know what he found.

With the woolly leftovers of the most diverse fabrics, he thought of creating a clay intended for the production of objects. The attitude of meticulous recovery where no one sees the possibility of upcycling is interesting.

Dark by Davide Groppi

We have already talked about the Davide Groppi exhibition and what this moving operation on the masters of the last century contains. Once the week of FuoriSalone 2021 is over, the certainty of having seen a memorable exhibition remains, in which with a certain audacity the designer reasoned about doing a project in solitude, with his hands, without thinking about reaching the stage of the commercial product. Almost lamps, almost works of art, almost poetic and measured ideas that are perhaps not industrial objects but ideas in suspension, waiting to mature. The design that reflects.

Urban trader's revolution by Sara Ricciardi

One of the happiest and most exciting moments at FuoriSalone 2021, on Saturday at aperitif time, with Sara Ricciardi at the head of a colorful and multigender micro procession. The social designer thought about the role of design in planning the use of public space. And this time she stages her theatrical attitude to show that you can live the street with great creativity.

And that places must be looked at in a different way, because they can become spaces in which theater, artistic reflection, spontaneous project return. And a certain way of being together outside the rooted habit: using specially designed coins – again by Ricciardi– to buy poetic and baroque street food.

Sara accompanied a hyper decorated "wagon", capable of flaunting all the Italian culture (the most Mediterranean one, certainly not the Milanese one) and remind us that joking, exaggerating, putting one's face on it, is really important in order not to succumb to the obscurantism of "we are in trouble". We're in trouble, but there are ways to try and get out of it.

Orografie

There is nothing to say about this new brand presented at Palazzo Litta during Design Variations 2021. Because it will be talked about a lot and extensively in the coming months. To say the least, one of the best things about FuoriSalone 2021. The project born from a call / competition curated by Vincenzo Castellana on the occasion of Edit Napoli is beautiful. The concept told by the curator of MAXXI Domitilla Dardi is beautiful.

The collection, seen from life, is very beautiful. The last forty years of design pop up here and there with delicate and loving quotes. Objects are new, in the sense that it is necessary to observe to understand what they are used for. Which is a bit like what happened in the face of design in the 1950s. Then once you understand it, the desire for relationship and use is immediate, because there is always an invitation to change perspective and a series of small new thoughts and rituals. We have changed and Orografie has responded to the change. Finally, the care of the manufacture: materials and finishing chosen with reasoning. Well done!