The “supersalone” Special 2021 Salone del Mobile.Milano event, slated for 5th to 10th September at Rho, Fiera Milano is just a little over a month away.
The unique, one-off event is geared not just to sectoral professionals and the international design community, but also to the general public, who will have access to the fairgrounds for the entire duration of the event. The event will be curated by architect Stefano Boeri and an international team of collaborators – Andrea Caputo, Maria Cristina Didero, Anniina Koivu, Lukas Wegwerth and Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual. Lets meet them.
Stefano Boeri
Stefano Boeri, architect and urban planner, is Full Professor at Politecnico di Milano and visiting professor in several international universities. In Shanghai he is Director of the Future City Lab at Tongji University: a post-doctoral research program which explores the future of contemporary metropolis under the perspectives of biodiversity and urban forestry. Stefano Boeri’s work ranges from the production of urban visions and architectures to interior and product design. Editor in chief at Domus (2004-2007) and Abitare (2007-2011) and author of several publications – the last one, Urbania has just come out in bookstores – Stefano Boeri has been curator of international exhibitions of architecture and design. As a member of the Architecture Council for Expo 2015, Stefano Boeri designed the Masterplan for Expo 2015 in Milan together with Jacques Herzog, Ricky Burdett and other high – profile international experts. In Milan as Councilor for Culture (from 2011 to 2013) he promoted the Bookcity and Piano city exhibitions, respectively dedicated to literature and music, which the city inherited among its cultural events of international importance. In Milan he is also creator and curator of the festival MI/Arch and Artistic Director of the Milano Arch Week. In 2017 Stefano Boeri is curator of SUSAS (Shanghai Urban Space Art Season), the most important urban planning, architecture and public art event promoted by the Municipality of Shanghai. Since 2018 Stefano Boeri is President of Triennale Milano and, since 2020, President of the Scientific Committee of Forestami, the project aimed at planting 3 million trees in the metropolitan area of Milan within 2030. Author with Boeri Studio in 2014 of the Bosco Verticale in Milan, Stefano Boeri is currently engaged with his professional offices in Milan and Shanghai in the design and construction around the world of numerous buildings able of integrating architecture and living nature.
Giorgio Donà
Giorgio Donà, architect, is Co-Founder with Stefano Boeri and Director of Stefano Boeri Interiors, a multidisciplinary studio based in Milan, that operates and develops projects and researches in the field of interior design, exhibition design and product design. He starts his career in 2012, when he becomes part of Stefano Boeri Architetti’s team. He has participated in various international competitions in which he has been awarded prizes and received honorable mentions. In 2011 he received a special mention for the international competition for a vision and the urban regeneration project “Venice City Vision” with a special jury and the president Bjarke Ingels (BIG architects). His works have been published in several books and international reviews such Cityvision Mag (Indipendent Architecture Stuff – Issue 4 – 2011) and Interni Magazine (Issue December 2020) as well as in catalogues such as Fundamentals (Biennale di Venezia – 2014), Reporting from the front (Biennale di Venezia – 2016), the ADI Design Index for the project “Across Chinese Cities – Beijing” and Homo Faber. Crafting a more human future (Marsilio – 2018). Giorgio Donà is currently working on projects on different scales, fields and geographies: in addition to interior design, he is working on exhibitions and events design, product design, research and art direction.
Andrea Caputo
Andrea Caputo is an architect and researcher living in Milan. He combines his professional practise with ongoing research in the architectural and urban planning fields, and has published numerous editorial projects and articles. In 2011, Andrea opened his award-winning architecture studio in Milan and three years later he opened another one in Shanghai. His work is recognised for its unexpected solutions, often juxtaposing different materials, which draw attention to the smallest of architectural details.
The studio works internationally, developing complex projects on all scales, in collaboration with a qualified network of specialist consultants. His first investigation into urban culture’s aesthetic and social influences was published as All City Writers (Critique Livre, 2009) and soon became a sought-after reference work for street culture. From 2018-19, he edited Domus magazine’s “Studio Visit” column, which explored contemporary architecture studios’ practices. Currently, Andrea’s studio is engaged on behalf of the Vastushilpa Foundation of Ahmedabab to conduct a vast survey on the architecture of Balkrishna Doshi, Pritzker Prize 2018.
Maria Cristina Didero
Maria Cristina Didero is an independent design curator, consultant and author, who has collaborated with magazines such as Domus, Vogue Italia, L’Uomo Vogue, Flash Art, Apartamento, Solar, Flair, L’Officiel, Harper’s Bazaar and was editor-at-large of ICON Design from 2018 to 2020, currently covering the role of Milan Editor of Wallpaper magazine. She has contributed to many publications and consulted for companies such as Vitra, Fritz Hansen, Lexus, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Valextra among others. Based in Milan, Maria Cristina works internationally, curating exhibitions for institutions, fairs and design events: she has worked for Vitra Design Museum for 14 years while some of her recent projects include The System of Objects (together with Andreas Angelidakis) at Deste Foundation, Athens; Nendo: The Space in Between and The Conversation Show at the Holon Design Museum, Israel; FUN HOUSE by Snarkitecture at National Building Museum, Washington D.C.; SuperDesign a project about Italian radical design, NY; Vegan Design – or the Art of Reduction by Erez Nevi and The Fish and The Crowd by Carlo Massoud, for Milan design Week. She is currently preparing a solo exhibition on the subject of migrants with Fernando and Humberto Campana at dallas contemporary, in Dallas, Texas, a project at the MK&G in Hamburg titled Ask Me if I Believe in the Future, and one in Eindhoven for 2022.
Anniina Koivu
Anniina Koivu is a design writer, curator, consultant and teacher, who divides her time between Milan and Lausanne. She works across a number of fields, from curation to art direction, product development, and editorial and research projects, which she develops for clients such as Kvadrat, Iittala, Vitra, Camper and the Fogo Island Workshops and Shorefast Foundation.
In autumn 2021, U-Joints – A taxonomy of connections, developed together with Andrea Caputo, will be published. The encyclopedic publication is the result of a three-year research project and exhibition series that look at human history through joints. U-JOINTS has been exhibited during the week of the Salone del Mobile.Milano 2018; A taxonomy of nails, screws, bolts, rivets and nuts was on show at elac/ECAL in 2019, the Adhesives and fusions chapter is open at the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur until January 2022.
Her latest research and publication is Vico Magistretti: Stories of Objects (Triest/Ecal, 2020), the result of an investigation of the little-considered moment in the lifespan of design products when production stops, with a focus on the reasons that lead up to this end of the design object. She wrote the comprehensive monograph on Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec Works (Phaidon, 2011) and has edited and contributed to a number of publications such as Materialising Colour: Journeys with Giulio Ridolfo (Phaidon, 2020), Atlas of Furniture Design (Vitra Design Museum, 2019), Industrial Facility (Phaidon, 2018), Arita 2016/ (Phaidon, 2017), The Walking Society (Lars Müller Publishers, 2015) and Pierre Charpin’s Entre Les Vases (Birkhäuser, 2009), among others. Serving as editor-in-chief on Interwoven (Kvadrat, 2020), Anniina launched the first print issue of the (online) magazine on contemporary culture and independent criticism. Among her other curatorial works are Tehdas–Fabrik–Factory (Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale, 2019), an exhibition exploring the diversity of contemporary design production, and Typologie: the wine bottle and the cork stopper (Milan, 2019). She has been a speaker, moderator and juror at international design competitions and events. She is Head of Master Theory at ECAL/ University of Art and Design Lausanne.
Lukas Wegwerth
Lukas Wegwerth works on the intersection of crafted objects and engineered modular structures. All projects find common ground in the territory of joints and connection making and their accompanying methods and strategies. The Three+One system is an ongoing project that explores a straightforward approach to modular constructions— from furniture to architectural-scale structures. It provides a platform for collaborative building, lending itself to use in multiple contexts such as exhibition design, academic research, public spaces and private interior.
The Three+One system has been applied in Non-Extractive Architecture at V-A-C Foundation, State of the Art of Architecture at Triennale di Milano, Biodesign Lab at HfG Karlsruhe, Atelier LUMA and LUMA Foundation amongst others
Studio Folder
Studio Folder is a visual design and spatial research agency founded by Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual in 2012, and based in Milan. The studio works both on commissions and on independent research initiatives, working through a diverse range of outcomes – from data visualisation, both for physical and online spaces, to the design of exhibitions, web platforms, printed media, editorial products, art direction and visual identities.
Recent projects include the exhibition design and catalogue for Broken Nature, the XXII International Exhibition of Triennale Milano curated by Paola Antonelli; the visual identity and book design for “Oceans in Transformation,” an exhibition at Ocean Space, Venice, led by TBA21–Academy; the art direction and design of the communication campaign for miart 2021, international modern and contemporary art fair in Milan; “Kiruna Forever. A Visual Exploration in Five Acts,” a film and a projection mapping for ArkDes in Stockholm, Sweden; “Everything We Know”, an immersive data visualization for “Radical Curiosity. In the Buckminster Fuller Orbit”, an exhibition at Fundación Telefonica in Madrid.
The book A Moving Border. Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change, jointly published by Columbia Book on Architecture and the City and ZKM | Karlsruhe in 2019, is based on Studio Folder’s long-term research project “Italian Limes,” which was awarded a Special Mention at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia.