Not only are the Salone del Mobile.Milano exhibits are located at the fairgrounds, but many are also located at permanent and temporary showrooms across Milan. I convinced Mrs. Reid to join me as these Euroluce exhibits are located in the best part of the city and we can visit a few exhibitions and have a nice dinner.
“You are lost,” she barks as we enter a very rough area of Milan. “I am strictly following GPS”, I explain. We continue walking as the graffiti increases and approach what appears to be an abandoned factory area with weeds and even trees growing up through the roofs. Could there be some new swanky gentrified building behind the rust and the graffiti? It turns out no, and that is exactly the point. The brilliance of the choice of location strikes me. The Alcova exhibit truly is using an abandoned industrial site—a site that, in a different era, would have been totally demolished and rebuilt. Its present format is perfect for temporary exhibits that blend with the graffiti, weeds and rust.
Lucas Feet, of the company A-N-D, displayed his Vector line of luminaires. A-N-D is a decorative luminaire design studio and manufacturer based in Vancouver, Canada where original collections are conceptualized, built and assembled in-house. Vector is a slender rectilinear section cut from precise paths of steel so that the panels are fitted together. Light is directed to wash down its inner sloped surfaces, offering a gradient effect. The model Lucas displayed was in weathered steel—which fit perfect in the Alcova area.
[ARRAY], based in The Netherlands, is a personal collection of decorative and functional lighting that has been curated, designed and developed by David Derksen. This wood veneer fixture is gorgeous with its beautiful louvers. Normally veneer is glued onto a cheaper wood, such as plywood to decorate the surface. In this case the wood veneer of just 1.5mm has been used as the construction material. Such thin wood is best applied under tension. Using industrial laser cutting machines, precise parts are cut and put together as a building kit without any screw or glue. The parts can be easily assembled and disassembled and transported in a very compact way. It sells for €1950.
Next we visited Materica, which is an Italian luxury coating using many materials including zinc. An engineer we spoke with explained that the material is ideal for luminaire reflectors. They were exhibiting a Styrofoam face covered in zinc reflected onto the floor. It was an excellent immersive display to show-off its reflectivity. Guests had to put on shoe covers to walk on the mirrored floors.
Adrian Cruz from Mexico, and Sandro Giulianelli from Italy, both graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Florence. Their training was strongly influenced by Renaissance architecture and by the radical design experiments which had its origins in Florence in the 1960’s. They teamed up and developed marble and onyx table lamps.
According to his website, Fabian Freytag is one of the hundred most important and most brilliant minds in the fields of style, design and architecture, compiled by the AD editorial offices in Paris, Milan, Madrid and Munich. At Euroluce Fabian displayed a project called Bar Fourage. Fabian is more of a furniture designer and curator than a lighting guy. The orange lamps caught Mrs. Reid’s eye and she thought the décor was fabulous.
