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From April 15 to 21, 2024, the eighth edition of Isola Design Festival, helmed by physical and digital design platform Isola, will open its doors to an evolved format. Hidden locations within the Isola design district that have always remained shut during Milan Design Week will morph into creative hotspots—augmenting the list of many other venues. Together, the locations will point towards and investigate the future of design, embodying Isola’s annual theme for 2024 The Future is Currently Unavailable. Through a creative whirlwind characteristic of the design festival and inspiring exchanges, visitors and participants will be nudged to observe, reflect and act. “This year, Isola is on a journey to prove that design is more than just sustainability, it’s a powerhouse for tackling real-world issues. Picture it like this, a travelling hub of exciting, curated, and innovative design initiatives. We’re not just building a community, we’re setting the stage for the future of design,” says Gabriele Cavallaro, Co-founder and CEO of Isola Design Group.
Lampo, along with WAO PL7 and Galleria Giovanni Bonelli, is one of the new venues chosen by Isola Design District to host exhibitions, installations, events, workshops, live performances and talks together with independent designers and creative studios from across the world. Lampo Milano is an urban redevelopment project spanning 50,000 square metres at the historic Scalo Farini restored as a whole to the city of Milan in 2022. The project invites visitors into its spaces that inspire creativity through coworking areas, cultural events, workshops, pop-up galleries and other engaging activities. This impressive backdrop of Lampo will be home to two main exhibitions—Isola Design Gallery and Is One Life Enough?—along with five installations and an array of talks and panel discussions.
Isola Design Gallery will focus the spotlight on collectible design, designs with a narrative, Dutch design and contemporary product designs from all over the world. Owing to the polycarbonate panels and materials provided by Polypiù, the exhibition design will feature a play of colour, light, and transparency in juxtaposition with the brutalist industrial space. Designers and studios such as Aernout Langeveld, Yufei Gao, David Valner Studio and OHM Studio will partake in the show. Moreover, the exhibition will host a showcase curated by Juan Torres for DesignWanted. ENHANCE - Design for Social Impact will platform innovations—devices that harness solar energy to generate light/electricity, systems that recycle waste within a circular economy, and more—that impact society positively. Participating designers are AmbessaPlay & Pentagram, Birdie, Cheuk Laam Wong, David Wojcik, Fucina Frammenti, Jonas Krämer, Nick Geiper & Charlotte Von Ravenstein, Rehub, Simone Perini, Strena Medical.
The second exhibition, Is One Life Enough? will present a curated selection of collectible pieces and products crafted using sustainable materials and circular methods. It aims to broach a dialogue surrounding the possibilities within a human, product, and material lifetime while also infusing new life into single life cycle products. One section of the exhibition will also be dedicated to Colab, the first purpose-built material library in the United Arab Emirates. With a minimal environmental footprint, the exhibition will boast sustainable craftsmanship. Participating designers and design studios include ARTL, 1x1 systems, Emma Johann, Siyu Liu, Studio Jean Louis Noël and Yasmine Mahmoudieh among others.
In addition to the design exhibitions, Lampo will be home to five installations next to Isola Design Store, in collaboration with L'Essenziale Studio and HeyCrates, with small pieces of design, magazines and much more on sale, and at Isola Media Corner dedicated to Talks and Panel Discussions, in collaboration with L'Essenziale Studio and DesignWanted.
Blueground by ASA & Alberto Vallesi Design Studio x La Pietra Compattata is a playground built with regenerated and conscious materials—a gathering space exercising the possibilities of sustainable use of matter. Senziente by Jonathan Bocca explores the concept of sentience and our relationship with the environment through recycled furniture design and an interactive relationship between users and objects. The Future Will be Sown by Made in Earth Collective is a theatrical experience: six days, six ecological materials, and six wearable ornaments, meticulously emerging from six different landscapes in Southern India.
Born during fashion week, CIELI by Cavaliere Atelier interweaves industrial knowledge of aluminium processing with tailoring expertise for recycling cotton waste from jackets. The installation will serve as a manifesto of craftsmanship capable of shaping uniqueness. The fifth installation outside the exhibition space will be «Re-campaign» reused advertising canvases tell a «new» story by studio mo man tai. Canvases, originally covering building facades, are reused to conceive a visual installation outside Lampo. A collision of layers, volumes, colour contrasts and graphics will call attention to themes that deserve a campaign.
Throughout the design event there will be the special participation of Pitti Mags, a new project by Pitti Immagine developed in collaboration with Frab's Magazines, an organisation spreading the culture of independent magazines in Italy. A real newsstand, all blue and itinerant, with the most loved independent magazines from all over the world: over 70 titles including fashion, art, design, photography, urban planning, illustration, literary, travel, feminist/ queer, society, food and sport.
Stay tuned to STIR's coverage of Milan Design Week 2024 which showcases the best of exhibitions, studios, designers, installations, brands and events to look out for. Explore EuroCucina and all the design districts—Fuorisalone, 5vie Design Week, Isola Design Week, Brera Design District and Porta Venezia Design District.
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