Creativity and the city
Milan, once more, bets on design and young artists, launching the project Milan Network for Design.

With MIND, 110 young creative artists, selected at national and international level, will be welcomed by 11 schools in Milan, to attend a master and do a final stage at a company in Lombardy.

The initiative was conceived by the Municipality of Milan, together with Triennale Design Museum, Association for Industrial Design and 11 among the most important design schools in the Milan area.

“Thanks to its numbers, its dimensions, its quality and its fame, Design in Milan represents a significant phenomenon” explains councillor Luigi Rossi Bernardi. Thanks to this project, students will have the chance to work and live for a year in the capital of design. Schools will be able to reskill their academic programmes. It will also be an important opportunity for enterprises and the entire economic system.

“I think the MIND project is of great importance for the promotion and dissemination of Italian design in the world together with the Triennale di Milano and Triennale Design Museum, which, through the scientific coordination of this project – said Davide Rampello, president of the Triennale di Milano – are placed on a line of continuity in their mission of enhancing excellence of Italian creativity.”

Coordinator of the initiative is Alintec, company promoted by Assolombarda, Chamber of Commerce and Politecnico di Milano Foundation.

Info
www.milanetworkdesign.it

Italian version

An international forum made of events, exhibitions, workshops for creative European youngsters who, under the leadership of the patroness Li Edelkoort, the most popular trend forecaster in the world, will share resources and ideas in the sectors of fashion, design and art.

Under the sponsorship of Confindustria Como and of a group of young entrepreneurs has been created a real European “creativity hub”, a “qualified crossroads of experience that can help young people find the right job and that finds in Como and in its extraordinary tradition and vocation its natural place”.

The themes of the year are recycling and ecological sustainability, applied to ComOn Textile, ConOn Design (sponsored by ADI, Association Industrial Design), and the new ComOn Arte.

In this case, “Come On” refers to the young curators of contemporary art not older than thirty-two, to whom is destined the competition for an exhibition project of five installations made by as many young artists, always with eco-friendly and recycled materials.

For such a young and innovative event obviously has been organized a party, the “Jungle Party”, that will take place on 16th October 2009 taken care of and organized by the most promising youngsters of IED and Naba.

www.comon-co.it/

Italian version

Ideated, co-ordinated and sponsored by DesignPartners, Milano design-in-the-city will be an event dedicated to the product design that will involve the city in showrooms journeys, cultural and entertainment activities, to create occasions for communication, public relations and sales.

The main theme will be “The shape of dreams”, that will lead the participants in the arrangement of the shop windows, in the organization of the single events and in the commercial offers. Three the main souls of the exhibition: shops, culture and entertainment.

To welcome to the best of their ability visitors and participants, there will be organized in Milan many reception and information desks in strategic positions and design hotels, spa and restaurants will play their role in a journey dedicated to entertainment and welcoming guests.
Italian version

Projected by the Madrid Studio Selgas Cano, it was realized at the very heart of a wood.

Relaxing and silent, this original location perfectly suits the needs of those that, in order to work, necessitate absolute concentration.

Only a few are in fact the distractions, but priceless is the inspiration that even a mere walk in the woods can arise.

www.selgascano.com

Italian version

In exclusive preview, Wednesday 15th April, Nicolò Cardi, Barbara Berlusconi and Martina Mondadori, members of the gallery, and Sarah Cosulich Canarutto, curator of the exhibition, presented to the press the artist and her innovative installations, like the videos The Lesson, or Just be good to me.
Peculiarity of the event, the cooperation with RIM and BlackBerry, that used this occasion to develop the new application “Cardi Black Box”, especially created by Techmobile Snc as an easy and quick tool in the “service of art”.

The BlackBerry users, in fact, already since 3rd April could download from the address http://it.blackberry.com/cardiblackbox the pictures of the personal European opening of Michal Helfman and have a preview of all the information about her life and about her works that will be at the exhibition through a quick, intuitive and surprising tool.

BlackBerry has always taken care of the design and the appeal, but this time it clearly wanted to emphasize its proximity to all that is aesthetics and style, as explains Alberto Bevilacqua, Carrier Relationship Director of RIM – BlackBerry: “It would come natural to answer that BlackBerry are works of art. The communication tools we offered to our clients have never been the classic ones: BlackBerry has always used the word of mouth; now, to reach different kinds of clients not strictly business, we want to identify new channels of communication. BlackBerry is a communication tool not exclusively based on e-mails, but it also uses a series of codes, both artistic and visual. We introduced great multimedia features inside the BlackBerry. To have multimedia skills without the tool is useless, thus we decided to cooperate especially with Cardi Black Box because, like us, is young, innovative, and it suggests extremely original exhibitions”. Thus, he concludes: “Cardi Black Box is telling something new in the world of art galleries, the same way as we do it in the world of telecommunication”. A project that had its official start up, but that according to its advocates’ intentions fits in the firm’s concept of “Life on BlackBerry”.

Italian version

Manual skills and creativity are typical of the Brazilians and the Campana brothers often look for contact with the young people of the favelas, with whom they actively co-operate. Thus the playful South American spirit of the Campana brothers explodes in creations famous for their strong evocative component, taking their cue from everyday-use objects, waste, industrial materials, which they transform, offering them new aesthetic dignity.
Irony, inventiveness and innovation in a poetic, metropolitan, cheerful and colourful design. Design creations that stress a strong sense of culture and traditions: the work of the Campana brothers is a fascinating journey in the spirit of Brazil. Everyday trivial materials are transformed in unexpected combinations to create objects of high aesthetic and financial value. They build chairs with furry toys, use timber destined to the construction of favelas to create a design chair, they twist ropes, polyurethane cylinders and steel cables through which they give ‘design’ a new meaning: to frame an emotion in the physicality of furniture components, using creativity as an Ariadne’s thread between function and meaning. Because, as Fernando says: “Recycled materials or simple cardboard, paper and wood allow you to experiment in a dimension that spans from art to design, from technical skill to free creativity. For Brazilian designers like us, irony plays a major role, especially during creativity. It is just another form of emotionalism”.
Artists, thinkers, vanguard followers, they create and project using their very own line of “non fashion”, which is characterized by a good deal of ingeniousness, significant technical expertise and by a vibrant and energetic approach to design.
Even though their design has a taste of handmade, manual and rough, the work of the Campana brothers is the result of a very careful research, a well balanced mix of technology and science that has excited and inspired some of the most important Italian companies of interior design, who have secured the name of the two artists. They have joined the group of young creative talents that, starting from the ‘80s and the ‘90s, have been writing a new chapter in the history of design.
Deconstruction and reworking: this transformation process has infused new energy to contemporary design, offering a vibrant alternative to the rationalism of ideals that dominate today’s modernity. Humberto and Fernando are able to use the energy of their tradition to define new aesthetics, based on experimentation, creating a new and surprising viewpoint. As was the case for Vermelha, the wrap-around chair that made them famous: to build the chair they used five hundred meters of a special rope with an acrylic core and covered in cotton. The cord is hand-woven through careful overlapping, leaving sufficient surplus to form a kind of random weave which creates an unusual padding.
The TransPlastic series embraces many of the concepts explored by the two designers. It tells a fictional story: in a world made of plastic and synthetic materials, a fertile ground is laid for ‘transgenic’ creations; the material clashes with the more mature approach of contrasts: nature and plastic, cold and warm, textured and smooth surfaces.
Natural fibres cover the plastic as in an immunological response: nature grows from the plastic and vice versa. Multiple-seating chairs, lamps, clouds and islands: elements created by taking advantage of the elasticity of natural fibre. The starting points are plastic chairs, water containers and rudimentary wood stools, with the addition of elements to alter the original form and to add value and comfort to the original base material.
Humberto and Fernando work does not stop at interior design, their creativity spreads to ballet as well. Exploring new confluence points between technique and emotion, Frédéric Flamand – director of Biennale Danza – measured himself against the world of design and involved the Campana brothers in his latest theatre production: Metamorphoses. The set and costumes clearly bear the Campana signature: light skirts and ramiform structures that wrap around the bodies of the dancers, all obviously built with recycled materials.
Humberto and Fernando Campana, were born in Sao Paulo and graduated respectively in architecture and law, they have held conferences and workshops in the whole world, including at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Vitra Design Museum, Berlin; Ecal, Lausanne; Parsons School of Design, New York. At the Museu Brasileiro da Escultura (MuBE) of Sao Paolo they lectured a course for two years and have started a group called Notechdesign. Their creations have been showcased in the most prestigious International museums and galleries, among which: MOMA, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Palazzo Reale, Milan; Vitra Design Museum, Berlin. Some of their design pieces are part of the permanent collections of Moma in New York and of the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin.