Milan, April 2016 / Design Miami/ announces Design Curio and Design at Large participants, offering presentations that support and complement the fair's museum-quality Gallery Program and alternative viewpoints of collectible design.With Design at Large in its third year, Cabana Magazine founder and editor in chief Martina Mondadori turns her attention to natural landscapes as guest-curator of this year's edition.
Design Curio returns in its largest edition yet, with an assorted array of themes ranging from fluorescent lights to future work spaces and explorations of materials.
Both the Design at Large and Curio programs, which were populated through an open call for submissions, provide spaces to consider design practice in its broadest possible applications: from a Jean Prouvé schoolhouse presented by Galerie Patrick Seguin to delicate glassworks from FABRICA presented by Roehrs & Boetsch.
Design at Large/Founder and editor in chief of Cabana Magazine Martina Mondadori utilizes her discerning eye and editorial approach to the curation of this year's edition of Design at Large. Her aesthetic is complemented by a natural ability for storytelling, weaving a clear narrative through the eclectic exhibitions chosen for Design at Large. Highlights from this year’s program include three monumental structures that will anchor the landscape of the exhibition.
Jean Prouvé's Temporary School of Villejuif, presented by Galerie Patrick Seguin, demonstrated the architect's forward thinking approach with a structure that blends into its environment, allowing ample natural sunlight into the schoolhouse while offering an uninterrupted view of the surroundings.
Galerie Philippe Gravier presents Kengo Kuma's Owan. The shelter's outer-shell, which is made of interwoven zigzagging metal strands, merges into the surrounding landscape while the inner membrane protects occupants from the elements.
Another teahouse presented by Revolution Pavilions is Ron Arad's Armadillo Tea Canopy, which sits unobtrusively in its natural surrounding thanks to the natural materials used in its construction and provides an intimate and demountable place of reflection.
These three highlights and the remaining projects selected for Mondadori’s edition of Design at Large define a unique way of living within landscape with mobility, functionality and environmental awareness.
Design Curio/For its second edition in Basel, Design Curio offers unique and immersive environments showcasing projects and ideas not typically found in the gallery program that include a study of pushing boundaries of material use, a window that looks out onto different parts of the world and an exploration of future workspaces.
LIZWORKS presents Oculist Witness, a limited edition piece by artist Hiroshi Sugimoto produced by Selima Optique. This unique collaboration takes the form of a limited boxed set of 25 wearable eyeglasses constructed with sterling silver and accompanied by a palette of seven interchangeable tinted lenses that cover the spectrum of grays and change the wearer's perspective.
Giustini / Stagetti Galleria O. Roma and Fonderia Artistica Battaglia present Delta, a collection of objects realized through a collaborative effort between the gallery, curator Domitilla Dardi and design duo Formafantasma. The collaboration has produced objects with a link to Rome produced by the city’s craftsmen. The complete collection is comprised of pouring vessels, furniture, lamps and a mirror.
Anotherview is a portable window produced by Anotherview that has an integrated scene that changes every 24 hours. Each of the presented views was captured by filming continuously from midnight to midnight from a fixed point out of a window and is part of a 365 day catalogue of unique vistas. The installation transports the viewer to different locales.
SO-IL creates an immersive environment to display an ongoing research project that explores the global disruptive transformations occurring in the realm of the work place as it gradually leaves the office building and seeps into the home. The Curio offers a glimpse into the design process with working prototypes of three furniture pieces that envision a new world where leisure and labor co-mingle.
Roehrs & Boetsch and FABRICA team up for the development of Table of Contents – a collection in glass. The 15 designs that make up the exhibition tell a story using glass as a medium for questioning our perceptions and human nature.
A Future Made’s Nature Lab tells the story of nature transformed. Presented by the British Crafts Council and The New Craftsmen, it introduces six new British craft talents united by a desire to test new possibilities and push materials beyond their limits.
Dansk Møbelkunst Gallery showcases a view of the future imagined in the past, with Danish author and architect Poul Henningsen’s fluorescent lamp from The House of Tomorrow and Gunnar Aagaard Andersen’s radical polyurethane chair.
Etage Projects presents a number of furnishing pieces indicative of the process of pulverization, fusion and reanimation of veneers. The Curio distorts perceptions of hard and soft surfaces, blurring the borders between digitization, aesthetics and materiality.