Kinky rubber tables and spikes. These provocative designs will make you rethink how you style your home
By Francesca Perry
Milan (CNN) — Held every springtime, Milan Design Week is the biggest moment of the year for the world of design – from the makers to the admirers of furniture and interior decor. Creatives converge from all over the globe, new designs are showcased, and trends are set for the forthcoming year. The Italian city, already a thriving metropolis of business and fashion becomes charged with a frenetic energy created by hundreds of exhibitions and happenings.
While Milan Design Week evolved from the Salone del Mobile furniture fair, launched in 1961 and still going strong, much of the most exciting design these days is found well beyond those trade halls. From the historic palazzi and stylish showrooms, to the villas, apartments, unexpected industrial hangars and abandoned buildings that open their doors; this is where thrilling gems can be discovered.
The emerging designers and cutting-edge brands are often more experimental than the long-running commercial producers – so it is the former that visitors look to for inspiration and a taste of what’s to come.
Here, then, are eight of the most surprising and enchanting objects from this year’s showcase that might just inspire your own home design.
A thorny vase (to go with your spiky chair)
One trend taking over the design world right now is spikes. Spiky furniture and home accessories introduce a punk sensibility into the home, and boldly eschew the assumption of comfort. Gast Studio’s Stem Vase, on show at group exhibition Deoron, features glossy oversized thorn shapes that give the object both a hostile presence and a pleasingly jagged profile, like a rose stem on steroids. Produced in 3D-printed resin and available in black or chrome, it’s certainly a statement for the dining table. Speaking of spikes, over at the megalith design exhibition Alcova, CJ Aslan – founder of fashion brand ASLAN WORLD – presents a chair and ottoman covered in a sea of sharp stainless steel ones, interspersed playfully with gemstones.
The sci-fi bed
The work of Astronauts, the Athens-based design studio of Danae Dasyra and Joe Bradford, has a kind of sci-fi, sculptural playfulness that perfectly aligns with the Gen Z fetishization of punky, Y2K style. The duo specializes in hydroforming, an industrial process where hydraulic fluid is used to shape ductile metals into new forms, which it applies to furniture and decor. Agnes, the studio’s new bed design, was presented as part of the “La Casa Magica” (“The Magic House”) exhibition at Milan’s Nilufar Gallery, and proposes a whole new meaning to adventurous bedrooms. Comprising irregular, curling and warped forms, the bed is crafted from stainless steel, powder coated in pink and black shades, with its design reportedly informed by female eroticism and intuition. Just beware the sharp edges.
The chair within a chair
Oh, to be held like a chair. This delightfully confusing creation from Slovenian designer Lara Bohinc features a shiny aluminum chair physically held within the arms of a reclining mahogany copy of the chair below. A skewed assemblage of interlocking shiny, bulbous forms, it’s almost as if a (sophisticated and design-conscious) clown has produced a balloon animal gone wrong. That sense of the zoomorphic is no accident, with Bohinc’s chair discovered as part of the “House of Creatures” show, presented by the Centre for Creativity in Slovenia at Alcova. A statement furniture piece to lounge on, to admire as an artwork, or to introduce what Bohinc describes as a “subtle misbehavior” into the home.
The provocative table
Interior decor has gone kinky. Emerging design studio Atelier Fomenta, based in Montreal, turned to black rubber to create its latest series of tables. “Rubber as a material carries many layers of connotation,” said Julia Arvelo, co-founder along with Florence Barnabé and Muriel Bentolila, over email. “It is industrially made and often appears in contexts unrelated to functional contemporary design.” The studio uses rubber sheets, which Arvelo explained share many qualities with leather. Each rubber table – on show at the exhibition “tête-à-tête,” presented by New York-based design platform Playinghouse – includes an undulating base of bound tubes, topped by a draped sheet, all held together by metal rivets. Inspired by minimalist and industrial aesthetics, the tables nonetheless propose a new kind of sexy, dark and tactile home interior.
The baby blue armchair for grown-ups
Clay, polystyrene foam and rubber don’t necessarily sound like obvious material choices for an armchair, but jewelery and homeware brand Completedworks doesn’t tend to operate in the realm of the expected. Its Blue Armchair, on show at design exhibition Convey, is blocky and rigid with rough-and-ready industrial detailing. But it’s also refined, in its way, drenched in baby blue and perfectly expressive of the current trend for sculptural ‘art’ furniture. “We often begin with a story as much as a form,” said Completedworks artistic director Anna Jewsbury over email. “Here, the reference was a tiered cake – something inherently stable and functional – which gave us a foundation to build something more playful. I like a piece that can reveals itself slowly; where you don’t fully understand it at first glance, and feel compelled to take a second look.”
The mystical candelabra
There’s something a little ritualistic or witchy about Studio Lugo’s candelabra, which is on show at Alcova. But candlemania has gripped the world of interior design, as many crave the soft glow and more natural feel of candlelight, and holders become the ideal vehicle for decor expression without breaking the bank (in most cases). Doruk Kubilay, the founder of the Istanbul-based studio, draws inspiration from the Turkish’s city’s long-running culture of craft and fabrication. The candelabra, made from alpaca metal (also known as nickel silver), embraces visible marks of welding and heat treatment, creating oil slick-like effects. Shaped like a slender mountain of rippling metal planes, it hosts candles at different levels and positions. Perfect in a grand hallway or in lieu of a fireplace – at dusk or otherwise.
A snuggly lamp…
The colorful, fluffy lamps by Antwerp-based Nelly Bellegarde – known as Napalosa – appear like fun little cartoon creatures, perfect to brighten up a dark corner or add a sense of play to a room. Bellegarde is a knitwear designer, but here applies her joyful textile work to functional objects for the home, using faux fur yarns. “The light is revealing the texture, the hairiness awakens your imagination,” she said of the designs over email. The Furry Lamps series – showcased in Milan at group exhibition Deoron – features lights to place on tables or hang from the ceiling, in hues from neon orange to baby blue. The fact the wires are covered in fur too just adds to the delight – and resembles fluffy tails.
… and one made from bread
Here’s a lamp that really is food for thought. French design collective Studio CoPain makes all sorts of objects and settings using sourdough, treating the material as other makers might use clay or wood. Its “T65: Croûte que Croûte” collection, on show at Alcova in an installation by the Design Academy Eindhoven – where the co-founders studied – comprises furniture, lighting and home accessories all made from baked bread. Studio CoPain used “pâte morte” (dead dough), a type of dough without any leavening agent, and the T65 number refers to the amount of bran present in the wheat, which affects the darkness of the color. Each object features decoration – in bread of course – depicting wheat ears and sheafs, as well as hearts and olive branches. The short and stout table lamp is positively good enough to eat.
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