Via Massimiano, Via Giovanni Ventura, Via Cletto Arrighi
Milan, Italy
For the first time at the Milan Furniture Fair, a unique industrial area of the city has been redeveloped to act as a stage for international design. This new area, dubbed Ventura Lambrate, focuses on the quality of the presentations, the substance of the exhibitors, and the content of the works presented.
La Rinascente, Milano Piazza Duomo
Milan, Italy
This year, 100% British Design, the brainchild of the Design Team at the British Consulate General Milan, will host a Design Supermarket within the basement of the famous and exclusive La Rinascente department store in the centre of the city.
I Saloni Internazionale del Mobile 2010 is just around the corner, and for this year’s fair DeTnk has created a design Map of Milan that will act as a guide to all visitors.
The live online map features the major venues of the fair (in light blue), as well as Milan’s key showrooms and galleries (in dark blue), and DeTnk’s recommendations for top restaurants and hotspots around the city (in red). The map can be easily accessed on iPhones and BlackBerrys, making it the perfect handheld guide to fair-goers as they wander through the streets of the city.
The Red Dot Design Museum
Essen, Germany
This month, the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen, Germany is hosting a special exhibition of the ‘Best of Dutch Design’, which will showcase the finalists and winners of the Dutch Design Awards 2009. The show will run from April 8 to May 2, and it seeks to demonstrate the two main trends in contemporary Dutch design: firstly, the commitment to create a truly useful and functional product, and secondly, the desire to create a perfectly designed and structured form.
Holland Park Avenue, London
On the 3rd of April the historic Leighton House in London’s Holland Park area reopened its doors to visitors after a £1.6 million refurbishment. Leighton House was designed by George Aitchison and was once the home of leading Victorian artist Lord Leighton (1830-1896).
GOODD Ltd.
Glasgow, Scotland
From the April 9 to the May 5, GOODD Ltd. in Glasgow, Scotland will present ‘Meaning’, a show of contemporary furniture that are both aesthetically sophisticated and completely functional for domestic and professional environments. The show aims to demonstrate the inherent quality in smart-thinking design that will make these objects ‘Future Inheritables’.
Frankfurter Messeglände
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
This year the biennial trade fair ‘Lighting+Building’ will run from April 11 to 16 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, overlapping with I Saloni del Mobile showing that there is life in the design world beyond Milan. ‘Lighting+Building’ is the world’s largest trade fair for energy efficient products and systems related to architecture and technology.
m i n t
Alexander Square, London
This month, the Mint shop in London will host ‘Chez Czech’, a retrospective of Czech designer Maxim Velcovsky. The show will exhibit items by other emerging and established Czech designers to compliment Velcovsky’s work and showcase the countries glassmakers, ceramic artists, and avant-garde designers.
Recently, the Financial Times featured a special section dedicated to Contemporary Design. The various articles covered a range of topics including a particularly interesting discussion from Edwin Heathcote on the status of Critical Design in today’s industry.
Haunch of Venison
Burlington Gardens, London
Now on view at Haunch of Venison in London is an exhibition of new work by Thomas Heatherwick. The show centers around ‘Spun’, an aptly named adaptation of the conventional chair that transforms the traditionally passive seat into the kinetic experience of a spinning top.
This month, we highly recommend picking up a copy of ‘Design History: Understanding Theory and Method’.
Design History has become a complex and wide-ranging discipline. It now examines artefacts from conception to development, production, mediation, and consumption. Over the last few decades, the discipline has developed a diverse range of theories and methodologies for the analysis of objects.
In this informative and slightly amusing article, David Pogue of the New York Times offers two critiques of the soon-to-be-available iPad: one for ‘Techies’ and one for ‘Everyone Else’. In doing so, Pogue goes beyond the iPad and makes an interesting social commentary on the nature of technology and design in the world today.
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