Review of design at Ventura Lambrate during the Milan Furniture Fair

Treasure Island by Noelle Mulder
Treasure Island by Noelle Mulder

“While there is much that is innovative at the fair itself, some of the more experimental work happens in other design districts. Ventura Lambrate is a wide-ranging series of exhibitions located in Milan’s Lambrate precinct. It began in 2009 when Dutch curators Margriet Vollenberg and Margo Konings teamed up with architect and entrepreneur Mariano Pichler to provide a new space for design talent during Milan Design Week.

“Growing each year in size and quality, this year Ventura Lambrate showed a lot of the best emerging and unknown talent, both Dutch and international. The strength of the work is due to the exhibition’s careful curation by Vollenberg and Konings, with strict judging criteria applied to each project.”

Thanks to editor Peter Salhani for publishing my review of Ventura Lambrate on architectureau.com.

 

People power, FOMO and Instagram: Narratives of Milan 2014

Instagramming Philippe Starck
Instagramming Philippe Starck

By Penny Craswell

The story you tell yourself about your world, your life, so often becomes your reality. It’s the same at the Milan furniture fair. It is impossible to see the number of things that are on display during the citywide plus fairgrounds event – or to go to all of the parties. So, each fairgoer’s experience is necessarily different, though there is a lot of overlap.

On Dezeen last week, Marcus Fairs claimed that “The star of Milan this year was Instagram” and this was certainly the first year that I used Instagram as the main tool with which to share in real time the show, and check what my friends and fellow journalists were seeing and doing. The fact that it feeds directly to twitter and facebook is also handy. Read more