This year, the Milan Furniture Fair will (officially) open at Palazzo Reale on 17 April with a pavilion designed by Carlo Ratti Associati. Ratti, who has worked with the French botanist Patrick Blanc, lets us “sample” the climate of the four seasons, by simply entering and exiting four natural and climatic micro-cosmoses. It will (symbolically) end at Palazzo Marino on Friday 20 April, with a large party and the presentation of the “Salone del Mobile.Milano Award”.

As always, it will be an intense six days (17-22 April 2018) both in the exhibition area and beyond, this year focusing more than ever on the synergy with the Lombardy capital. “In the exhibition area, the focus is on business, but the Fair is liquid, it flows throughout Milan”, explained the president Claudio Luti, yesterday, in the lecture hall of the Bocconi University, which was brimming with journalists and specialists of the sector for the presentation press conference.

Among those present, the mayor of Milan Beppe Sala, who stressed the concept, underlining how even the Triennale should regain a stronger position of leadership, also through the creation of the much longed-for Design Museum. “Design is still a way to understand Milan”, added Stefano Boeri, the most likely candidate for the role of chairman of the Triennale. It is therefore important “to have a place for objects which have a life story to tell”.

With 300,000 visitors, 2,000 companies and a distribution chain worth 26.8 billion euros, the Fair (in 2018 together with Eurocucina and the International Bathroom Fair) are the most important events worldwide for the sector, and in order to underline the strengths, a manifesto has been put together. “An act of affection, a pact of intent” for the city which, for the last 57 years, has hosted and nourished it.

It is a manifesto of words which also reconstruct and narrate the sense and the history of the event. It begins with emotion and enterprise (“designers come to Milan because there are still companies here that want to take risks”, underlines Luti). Then there is quality (“a complex alchemy”, as the designer Piero Lissoni explains, “it needs people who believe: designers, artisans, businesses”) and design (where “sustainability is an obligation, not a marketing problem”, stresses Luti). There is also the system: the young people (with the Satellite, which has been choosing the best international talent under the age of 35 for the last 21 years); communication; culture, and lastly, Milan in the centre of it all (a city, as Fabio Novembre underlined, which is “a suit to wear, a dress, comfortable, elegant, creative, which changes the point of view of those who wear it”).

An updated formula for the SaloneSatellite, which will be looking to Africa and Latin America with the exhibitions curated by the Brazilian brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana, and the French-Moroccan Hicham Lahlou,  as well as with young exhibitors (650 over 2,800 square metres) who will be invited to present works which examine the relationship between heritage and the contemporary, between new technology and craftspersonship,with a watchful eye on social and environmental emergencies.