From 4 to 9 April, Milan Design Week will be a vast and varied “container” of innovative (and, at times, even risky) solutions for design and more: increasingly greater attention is focused on the union of design and technology.
Robert Musil, in one of the most fascinating and complex chapters of his immortal novel The Man Without Qualities, spoke of the “union of the soul and the economy”: we (in a more mundane manner and certainly with lesser literary ambitions) can speak of the union—which Fuorisalone 2017 aspires to—of design and technology. Yes, because the tradeshow that takes place alongside the Salone del Mobile and that involves (in a very stimulating way) the entire city of Milan with installations, showrooms and events is ever more talented at taking on the interesting topic of how technology is united with design, proposing innovative solutions for the current market and even as possibilities for the future.
Browsing through the events
We don’t want to go into too much “technological” detail regarding the events of Fuorisalone 2017, which is currently under way. We will be able to better inform you after having verified the actual substance of this “cohabitation” among design, architecture and technology with our own eyes. Something, though, we can already mention, starting with the by now customary event put on by Panasonic, which this year is called “Electronics Meets Crafts”: an installation, created at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, that aims to recreate the fascination cultivated by the spatial dimension through the aesthetic concept typical of Japanese culture. Professional projectors, illumination devices and loudspeakers will be at the service of a multisensory space intended to stimulate all five of spectators’ senses.
If Panasonic is, so to speak, a “safe bet”, even just briefly browsing through the week’s program — as if it were the map of a packed group of Metro systems — we see many intersections of design and technology in various aspects: from home automation to lighting, from virtual reality to artificial intelligence. Of certain interest will be installations such as the “Poetic Tram Ride”, which will go around the city while projecting live images of the city itself (turned inside out using the classic pinhole camera) on its interior, or the two events organized by Audi in Corso Venezia 11, entitled “Future needs stories” and dedicated to home automation, the Internet of Things and the interaction between man and machine as well as, with greater ambition, to artificial intelligence and augmented reality.
Curiosities, of course, will not be lacking: on Thursday, 6 April in corso Como, Barbie’s Dreamhouse will be projected in 3D, while the Homi Sculpture Smart Experience will allow visitors to…sculpt their own self portrait in virtual reality! Further still we have the interesting scrutiny of “White in the City”, to close with a glance at the city of the future, “Material Village”, an event dedicated to the topic “New Materials for a Smart City” that will take place in via Tortona, and the conferences that Dutch designer and philosopher Koert van Mensvoort will dedicate to the ever deeper and more complicated relationship between nature and technology, or better yet (in its language) – between biosphere and technosphere.
All in all, there is something for all tastes and, most of all (so it seems), for all technologies!
TRAM
http://www.milanodesignweek.org/2017/03/poetic-tram-ride.html
AUDI
http://eventi.audi.it/audi-city-lab-2017milano/
HOMI SMART SCULPTURE EXPERIENCE
http://homismart.homimilano.com/it/homi-smart-sculpture-experience/
CASA DI BARBIE
http://www.milanotoday.it/eventi/casa-di-barbie.html
WHITE IN THE CITY
http://www.whiteinthecity.com/
KOERT VAN MENSVOORT
https://www.meetthemediaguru.org/koert-van-mensvoort-e-la-next-nature-a-meet-the-media-guru/
