This year the extraordinary format of the Salone del Mobile creates suggestions and provokes. Similar spaces between the various exhibitors create the differentiation between the various participants more linked to “emotions” than to the launch of new trends and fashions.
The central theme is certainly sustainability – already entering the fair you can see the trees positioned everywhere. Sustainability that becomes at the limit of obsession when all the fittings are made of chipboard panels from recycled wood, where authentic design pieces are exhibited above. The contrast is certainly strong, suggesting that sustainability can also win over design even in the capital of design: Milan.
Similarly, in the Statale di MIlano for the Fuori Salone stands in the center of the historic patio the animals of Noah’s ark to raise again awareness on sustainability, underlying the fragility of our ecosystem.
The big names in the sector in some cases timidly expose in the reduced space available few new designs (whereas on the website of the Salone del Mobile you can find all Categorie | Salone del Mobile (salonemilano.it)). Others with perhaps more success focus on emotions such as the recreation of an internal space of an airplane in flight, combining design, digital and creativity. An invitation to travel and to return to normality.
Wood remains an actor everywhere also because it is linked to the theme of sustainability and the need for houses where a lot of time is spent and must be increasingly welcoming and warm. However, it is accompanied by many comfortable and resistant materials such as porcelain stoneware, glass and marble. The colors are soft and tending to pastel.
At the Supersalone the ideas born from Covid are the winners; the increase in time spent at home has accelerated several consumer trends already underway. The furniture for the home is transformable: the kitchen becomes a wardrobe, the armchair becomes a sofa and the sofa becomes a bed – creating harmonized living spaces with work needs. Similarly, the race to find houses with gardens, terraces, dehors and balconies has generated a great interest in outdoor furniture that acquires importance in the fair, exhibiting innovative materials and design solutions.
Despite all the peculiarities of this Supersalone, the halls are more crowded than expected by Europeans, also thanks to the opening to private individuals. Certainly, many from the East and the Americas are absent.
In the daily search for a new normal for all furniture companies, it was worth being present at the Salone del Mobile 2021, to show that in these two years the furniture industry has not stopped but has continued to work, innovate and improve.
See you at the next trade fair in the furniture sector: SICAM, where ICRO will show its obsession with sustainability but without sacrificing design and quality. Francesco Moltrasio
