There are the indiscretions. The previews. The “it is said that” and the “I heard that…” Every year the anticipation of Salone del Mobile lives in a secular but in its own way liturgical ritual made of predictions and guesses, confirmations but – above all – surprises. What will surprise us this year? What will break the reassuring tracks of the predictable to lead us to the less comfortable but perhaps more interesting ones of the unexpected?

A question comes to mind. Will Salone del Mobile 2023 make us think about urgently momentous change such as that outlined by the impact of Artificial Intelligence on modes of production, distribution, and use of design products? Will there be anyone – among companies, workers, designers, and curators – who has imagined potential future scenarios marked by the irruption of AI into environments that are partly dominated by twentieth-century manufacturing modes of production? Someone who has tried to redefine the relationships between the machinic and the anthropic on the map of new technologies? 

We will see. We will search. We will observe. However, in the meantime, we should start with certainties. Salone del Mobile 2023 promises a new layout arranged on a single exhibition level to – it is said – simplify, improve and enhance visitors experience and fruition. The more critical ones suggest that the new layout is due to the reduced number of exhibitors. However, we like to take the official version at face value; the one that offers to visitors a ring-shaped, very smart route with improved fruition, welcome and visibility. Polycentric, multidisciplinary, and plural. Moreover, Constellations – the Euroluce 2023 project curated from an artistic and scientific point of view by Beppe Finessi – is announced. It is a widespread exhibition, with works by artists from the contemporary art, architecture, design and photography worlds. It makes use of a set-up curated by Formafantasma that develops a modular, lightweight and recyclable display system, designed to enhance the works on display but also to give visitors space to stop, observe, chat and even rest on the seats built into the structure.

The attention towards the visitors seems to be a must in the edition that is about to open; welcomed, courted, honored, amazed, they may indeed be the main protagonists. There are those who – as reported by Stefano Mirti in his Letterine – are ironic about the strategies that someone will put in place to flatter and amaze visitors. Everything will be done, even the strangest things, even discos, in order to attract and make ‘event’. It is no coincidence that Salone del Mobile 2023 lands on TikTok and promises a communication approach focused on innovation in order to reach – precisely – as wide an audience as possible. In times of social and digital revolution it is an almost mandatory choice.

Moreover, digital culture will be among the undisputed protagonists of Design Week 2023. For instance, there is great expectation for the installation designed by Elena Salmistraro on such an iconic building of the Milanese skyline as Torre Velasca. Elena Salmistraro will wrap the tower in a ‘dress’ of braided yarns that will trigger contaminations among the place, the city and the people who inhabit it. She will do so by intervening with digital technologies on the physical body of the architecture. Neither only physical nor only digital, Torre Velasca will thus become phygital (a crasis of ‘physical’ and ‘digital’) and release an unprecedented and revolutionary communicative potential.

There are many other hybridizations besides that between ‘physical’ and ‘digital’ to mark this year’s edition. Among the most interesting and evocative there is undoubtedly the one that some brands carry out by contaminating design with fashion. This is the case of Bottega Veneta, which involves a master like Gaetano Pesce in the production of two limited edition bags, My Dear Mountains and My Dear Prairies. These bags figuratively echo the artist/designer’s life and personal memories, evoking his early life in Italy – when he grew up near the mountains of Este – and his present life in the US – with a reference to the prairies of the West. Visitors will be called upon to undertake an immersive experiential journey to discover the two bags; an installation called Vieni a Vedere (Italian for ‘Come and See’) that will occupy the entire Bottega Veneta showroom in Via Montenapoleone, a sort of resin and fabric ‘cave’ into which one visitor at a time will enter, passing through the silhouette of a human figure.

One of the themes that will surely be at the center of many projects is the one revolving around key-words such as sustainability, quality, circularity, green, inclusion. What will be the forward guidance that Salone del Mobile will be able to offer? While waiting to see and verify in the field,

the exhibition that Triennale di Milano dedicates to the Dutch collective Droog Design exactly 30 years after its first participation in 1993 at the Fuorisalone should certainly be noted. Curated by Maria Cristina Didero and Richard Hutten, the exhibition was designed from a crowdsourcing of opinions, anecdotes and testimonies collected on social networks, according to a democratic process that is in tune with that desire that has always marked Droog’s vision to make design accessible to all. With their direct and essential designs – the name ‘Droog’ means ‘dry’ in Dutch – and with a powerful communicative force, the young people of the collective were already talking about sustainability thirty years ago, when it was not yet a fashionable term, and were taking on political and social issues that the design world would only face many years later.

It will be interested to visit the Dutch Satellite 2023 entitled Matter to check how the fertile and prestigious Dutch school of design is moving today. The word expresses and condenses many possible meanings: matter, but also substance, object, fact, issue, problem, topic. The four young designers selected for this year’s Dutch pavilion (Claire Chérigié, Tim Couwenberg, Envisions, Albert Potgieter) have decided to work as a team and to focus on the search for innovative materials and alternative solutions and perspectives related to sustainability, social inclusion and education, starting with a new interpretation of traditional techniques and materials. We will see whether they have picked up the lesson of Droog Design or have chosen to explore new paths.

Also dedicated to theme of a sustainable future is the new exhibition-event Interni Design Re-Evolution at the University of Milan, where Sanlorenzo presents La Macchina Impossibile (The Impossible Machine), an installation by Piero Lissoni that interprets the relentless research carried out by the shipyard on technologically innovative solutions to reduce yachting environmental impact. An impressive metallic sculpture placed in the center of the University’s 1700s courtyard and laid on a backlit platform aims to illustrate Sanlorenzo’s research towards sustainable yachting and a carbon neutral future for recreational boating.

Once again in a sustainable perspective, Tortona Rocks’s proposal generates curiosity; a proposal that poses a question (How do you take care of tomorrow? Design instructions) to the visitors of the Fuorisalone and that aims at creating an opportunity of reflection on how each one of us has an active part in redesigning a more attentive lifestyle towards out habitat, which rotates around human beings and their ever-evolving needs. Taking care of our tomorrow and doing it today: starting from this design perspective, Tortona Rocks brings to the Fuorisalone a transversal design that can be observed from different angles, proving once again to be a dynamic and open exhibition frame. Among the highlights of the 2023 program there are Ikea with Assembling the Future Together, Archiproducts Milano with their project Terra (Earth), and Paola Navone who will present the eclectic lottery Take It or Leave It, a free raffle of hundreds of objects, from antique Indian metal spoons to fine German china, that the designer gathered and collected throughout the years.

An aspect that permeates and connects many of the 2023 Design Week’s proposals on paper is a apparent material approach to the themes of design and exposition. Let’s take a look at a few examples. For instance, stone is the protagonist of the project Beyond the Surface in the heart of the Brera Design District: it’s an immersive installation balanced between dream and reality designed by Ellen Van Loon and Giulio Margheri from Studio OMA for SolidNature, the Dutch brand that specializes on natural stones. Through an itinerary articulated in seven different rooms – from the Initiation Room covered in translucent onyx slabs to the Confrontation Room filled with huge cubical monoliths in marble, granite, onyx, and travertine hanging from the ceiling – the exhibition promises the visitor a full immersion in an oneiric landscape in which they will discover the similarities between stonework and dreams, to then land into a garden full of stone sculptural design pieces by designers like Sabine Marcelis and the Iranian artist Bita Fayyazi.

Water is at the center of ECOTONO – metamorfosi dei confini (ECOTONO – the metamorphosis of boundaries), scheduled at the SaloneSatellite, which questions the limits that divide and unites water and earth, sea and coast, through a gallery of incredible items that the students at Isia of Faenza (Higher Institute for Artistic Industries) designed to reflect and intervene on a precious ecosystem that is becoming increasingly more fragile and is constantly transformed by the progressing of climate change. And Light is the absolute star in Delightful by Ron Gilad for Nemo Lightning: the artist and designer, who lives between Milan and Tel Aviv, proposes original pieces and installations that will engage the visitors thought the question: “what do we mean when we talk about light?” Placing his lamps in an ironic and provocative dimension, Ron Gilad promises to astonish and stimulate the audience with unexpected interactions.

Even Alessandra Baldereschi aims at astonishing her visitors with an installation for Dilmos placed in an imaginary and fairy-like place: a sequence of mirrors that reflect parts of trees and a table covered with a tablecloth at the center. The static nature of the background, with its arches and landscape, is interrupted by a robin passing by, which suddenly approaches the tablecloth, grabs a flap, and uncovers part of the table. The table and the tablecloth are made in brushed brass, which was sinuously modelled and curved to simulate the movement of fabric in a fairy Disney-like atmosphere.. 

Finally, two pieces of news from the civil and social point of view. The Design Week enters for the first time the San Vittore Prison in Milan, and it does so Without Invitation ­­­­­­– this is the title of the exhibition of design works created by the inmates starting from waste and scraps they could find in the prison. Brainchild of Davide Crippa, the exhibit exposes the results of the San Vittore’s workshop on Circular Economy, founded by Ilaria Scauri and held by design professors from the Iuav University of Venice, with the goal of inviting the visitors to look beyond the items and see the people who made them. Marva Griffin’s decision to dedicate to education the 24^th edition of the Salone Satellite also goes in a similar direction. This year’s theme is in fact Design Schools-Universities/Building the (Im)Possible. Process, Progress, Practice: the intention is to stress the importance of the contribution that schools and universities gave and continue to give to the education of the new generations of designers, guiding the process that, in the past few years, has made designers a mass profession.

Opening image: Future to Share, Bioglow Pure. Tortona Design Week 2023