Milan Design Week 2023: the events not to be missed at the Isola Design Festival

An itinerant community, that of Isola, which after having participated in the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven and the Dubai Design Week, returns to Milan with the theme Nothing Happens if Nothing Happens, an invitation to rethink production logic, regenerate and remedy.

“This year we want to directly stimulate creativity”, says Elif Resitoglu, co-founder and creative director of Isola Design Group.

“Isola Design Festival will be the hub of collectible, circular, sustainable and innovative design. By bringing together all members of our design community, visitors and all creators, we want to make things really happen”.

What to see at the Isola Design District for FuoriSalone 2023: the events not to be missed

The seven exhibitions curated by the creative team of Isola, led by the head scouter and curator Juan Torres, and by other guest curators:

• Circular - The Circular Village

In the 4 thousand square meters of the covered square of the Lombardy Region, Circular - The Circular Village displays raw materials, biomaterials and products made with natural resources or industrial waste.

Even the set-up, designed by Studio Mast of Amsterdam in collaboration, among others, with Fiction Factory, Interface and The Good Plastic Company, is zero waste, and once the event is over it will be dismantled and reused.

• Tools&Crafts

A new wave of craftsmen breaks into Isola with Tools&Crafts, at the Fondazione Riccardo Catella, to demonstrate how the design can preserve tradition, honor new and ancient techniques, and promote innovation.

On display are young craftsmen who combine traditional skills with experimental techniques, from the application of artificial intelligence, coding and 3D printing to glass blowing.

Not to be missed: the live performances of the craftsmen at work.

• Take Care! Of your mind, body, and environment

Francesco Pace, founder of the Tellurico studio, takes his (deserved) space and presents Take Care! Of your mind, body, and environment at Stecca3.

The young creative based in Eindhoven speaks of individual and collective well-being, and underlines the inequity in access to food resources, the rapid deterioration of the environment and the excessive production of waste.

The plus: in addition to raising questions, Tellurico promotes conceptual and practical solutions.

• Isola Design Gallery

The Isola Design Gallery, in via Pastrengo 14, is back in its fourth edition, the eclectic exhibition of unique, handcrafted products, collectible designs and customizable objects, with a corner on Dutch talent curated by Wisse Trooster and supported by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in Milan.

The backdrop to the selection is a landscape made of plaster, curated by Elif Resitoglu, creative director of Isola, and Stephanie Blanchard , co-founder of the Iammi studio, a tribute to the metaphysical settings of Giorgio De Chirico.

• Under Design Lebanon

Curated by Ghassan Salameh and hosted by the association Viafarini in via Farini 35, Under Design Lebanon exhibits a realistic mapping of the creative and craft industries in Lebanon at a time of social, political and economic crises.

Design is not the preserve of an elite, but is a mirror of society and its conflicts, and represents an important economic engine.

• Rising Talents

Space for young people in Rising Talents, in via Confalonieri 21, a selection of five young alumni of the Eindhoven Design Academy, curated by Wisse Troosters.

The designers will bring their works, such as sculptures, furniture and moving images, which combine the physical and digital dimensions.

• Innovation for living

Isola contaminates Certosa District and, in collaboration with Designtech and DesignWanted, co-curates Innovation for living, an exhibition in an industrial space of three thousand square meters dedicated to technology applied to product design and architecture.

The plus: the set-up is designed by Pininfarina, and transforms the space into a fluid, flexible area that interacts with the works on display.

Among other addresses, we point out:

Belonging: a modern fairytale

The founders of Social Label, Petra Janssen (studio Boot) and Simone Kramer (C-mone), promote 'design by doing' for help marginalized people enter the labor market. The results are on display in via Pastrengo 12.

Bestiary

At ZonaK, Bestiary deserves a pit-stop, a collection of 16 wooden animals, both a game and a desk object, made in KeepLife , a wood-based composite material generated using the shells of dried fruit with the addition of a binder free of harmful substances, fillers, solvents and formaldehyde.

Among the designers involved: Matali Crasset, Marialaura Irvine, Marta Laudani, Giulio Iacchetti, Matteo Ragni, Studio Algoritmo, Luigi Petrillo, Ilaria Spagnuolo and Pietro Petrillo.

Variety! Design experiments between academia and industry

Game design and lighting design by the Neeo studio, an intervention by the philosopher and curator Leonardo Caffo, the prototypes by the students of the Quasar Institute for Advanced Design Rome, natural and artificial materials, digital and real.

All this is Variety! Design experiments between academia and industry, at Zetalab.

Green Island

In the atrium of Garibaldi Station, Green Island by Claudia Zanfi hosts the installation Kiosk by Antonio Scarponi: a pop-up kiosk-kitchen, mobile, light and multipurpose in certified wood, which will host public activities such as readings of unpublished recipes, aromatic music shows and olfactory performances.

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