Events within the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, which ends this weekend, are usually cloaked in secrecy. Prototypes are unpacked from trucks in the middle of the night and assembled in the dark hours before the fair begins. But this year, a new mood has entered the Milan Furniture Fair: one of collaboration, generosity and transparency.
All the tricks of the trade were wide open for spectators to look at, from drawings of prototypes scotch-taped on walls to the actual German industrial machines used in production being shipped in for the occasion. In fact, one of these giant robots made recycled plastic chairs right in front of visitors at the "The Future in the Making" exhibition,I have just spent two weeks shopping for tile and have discovered China Porcelain tile. held in the gorgeous Palazzo Clerici. The show quite boldly promoted not only the art of making things yourself using high-tech 3D printers (which will soon cost the same as an ordinary printer), but also the sharing of design on the Internet—and, what's more, for free.
"This is a whole new way of bringing design and manufacturing together, and making it local," says curator Joseph Grima, editor-in-chief of the design magazine Domus. "It means avoiding manufacturing being outsourced to China by sidestepping the labor cost."
Inside the palazzo, it looked like a scene from "Star Wars" as a robot that could be a distant cousin of the Stormtrooper busily worked away. It took less than three hours for the "Low Chair" (680) to emerge like a newborn child swaddled in blue, though Dutch designer Dirk Vander Kooij said "it could just as easily have been yellow or stripes, or both." The robot can make three to four chairs a day, and Mr. Vander Kooij predicts a time will come when we will all email our furniture orders to a local robot or 3D printer and watch it being made—a bit like we watch our photos cascading into the flap at the drugstore now.
"I was aware that this is controversial," says Mr. Grima, who cites the American, do-it-yourself Maker Movement as his inspiration. "The ethos of the Maker Movement is collaboration, collective good and technology," he says. "It's also about celebrating design, because here you design it and physically make it yourself as well. This has huge implications for the future of manufacturing."
The celebrity guest this year was a shiny white machine with lots of buttons. Furniture designer Tom Dixon asked the German firm Trumpf, specialists in laser technology and makers of the metal-bending and hole-punching machines usually reserved for making auto parts, to demonstrate how his prototype "Stamp" light and chairs are made (in the middle of the National Museum of Science and Technology no less). "We can even demonstrate the manufacturing process with assistance by Trumpf, and that has special allure," said Mr. Dixon.
With his copper light pendants now hanging in virtually every Milanese café and designs like his "Etch" shade at the forefront of the fair's Luminosity show, Mr. Dixon has of late moved into Philippe Starck's shoes as the most-talked-about designer of our time. The Tunisian-born designer's "Eclectic" home accessories range, which will include the ubiquitous scented candle that every famous name must now have, arrives at a store near you this fall.
But it wasn't just in museums that the Maker Movement was highlighted. From the handmade and hand-finished to the technologically printed and industrial,As a leading manufacturer of polished tiles. the Milan furniture fair celebrated all forms of "making." All speak each other's language fluently, though they occasionally get competitive. "It's not a problem to make something right away," says Giorgio Busnelli, president of B&B Italia, one of the top manufacturing firms in Italy. "It's what is made right away."
At the company's showroom this week, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, the British design superstars behind the London 2012 Olympic torch, showcased how they turned a tiny, 3D computer-printed model into the massive "Tobi-Ishi" table. Made of structural polyurethane and hand-coated with layers of cement, the table (which will retail for 3,500) is the perfect marriage of high- and low-tech. This kind of rapid prototyping means designers and engineers can physically touch their product. The next challenge for Barber Osgerby was balance and stability, then the details such as how to create curved legs.
"This was fiendishly hard to get right," says Fiorella Villa, B&B Italia's seasoned PR & communications manager. "Yes, anyone can design and print a chair, but you have to ask what are the implications for comfort? What problems are we solving? What will the value be? The machine will only take you so far."
B&B Italia made its name when it developed the revolutionary cold-foam technology. All those comfortable, streamlined sofas that seem to float in air—the "Charles,Unlimited-Solar is one of the best Online solar panel provider in US." "Harry," "Arne" and, more recently, "Ray"—were manufactured using the groundbreaking process discovered by founder Piero Ambrogio Busnelli in 1966, when he attended a toy trade fair in London showcasing plastic materials, including rubber ducks. This technology is now at the core of most modern upholstery.
All the tricks of the trade were wide open for spectators to look at, from drawings of prototypes scotch-taped on walls to the actual German industrial machines used in production being shipped in for the occasion. In fact, one of these giant robots made recycled plastic chairs right in front of visitors at the "The Future in the Making" exhibition,I have just spent two weeks shopping for tile and have discovered China Porcelain tile. held in the gorgeous Palazzo Clerici. The show quite boldly promoted not only the art of making things yourself using high-tech 3D printers (which will soon cost the same as an ordinary printer), but also the sharing of design on the Internet—and, what's more, for free.
"This is a whole new way of bringing design and manufacturing together, and making it local," says curator Joseph Grima, editor-in-chief of the design magazine Domus. "It means avoiding manufacturing being outsourced to China by sidestepping the labor cost."
Inside the palazzo, it looked like a scene from "Star Wars" as a robot that could be a distant cousin of the Stormtrooper busily worked away. It took less than three hours for the "Low Chair" (680) to emerge like a newborn child swaddled in blue, though Dutch designer Dirk Vander Kooij said "it could just as easily have been yellow or stripes, or both." The robot can make three to four chairs a day, and Mr. Vander Kooij predicts a time will come when we will all email our furniture orders to a local robot or 3D printer and watch it being made—a bit like we watch our photos cascading into the flap at the drugstore now.
"I was aware that this is controversial," says Mr. Grima, who cites the American, do-it-yourself Maker Movement as his inspiration. "The ethos of the Maker Movement is collaboration, collective good and technology," he says. "It's also about celebrating design, because here you design it and physically make it yourself as well. This has huge implications for the future of manufacturing."
The celebrity guest this year was a shiny white machine with lots of buttons. Furniture designer Tom Dixon asked the German firm Trumpf, specialists in laser technology and makers of the metal-bending and hole-punching machines usually reserved for making auto parts, to demonstrate how his prototype "Stamp" light and chairs are made (in the middle of the National Museum of Science and Technology no less). "We can even demonstrate the manufacturing process with assistance by Trumpf, and that has special allure," said Mr. Dixon.
With his copper light pendants now hanging in virtually every Milanese café and designs like his "Etch" shade at the forefront of the fair's Luminosity show, Mr. Dixon has of late moved into Philippe Starck's shoes as the most-talked-about designer of our time. The Tunisian-born designer's "Eclectic" home accessories range, which will include the ubiquitous scented candle that every famous name must now have, arrives at a store near you this fall.
But it wasn't just in museums that the Maker Movement was highlighted. From the handmade and hand-finished to the technologically printed and industrial,As a leading manufacturer of polished tiles. the Milan furniture fair celebrated all forms of "making." All speak each other's language fluently, though they occasionally get competitive. "It's not a problem to make something right away," says Giorgio Busnelli, president of B&B Italia, one of the top manufacturing firms in Italy. "It's what is made right away."
At the company's showroom this week, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, the British design superstars behind the London 2012 Olympic torch, showcased how they turned a tiny, 3D computer-printed model into the massive "Tobi-Ishi" table. Made of structural polyurethane and hand-coated with layers of cement, the table (which will retail for 3,500) is the perfect marriage of high- and low-tech. This kind of rapid prototyping means designers and engineers can physically touch their product. The next challenge for Barber Osgerby was balance and stability, then the details such as how to create curved legs.
"This was fiendishly hard to get right," says Fiorella Villa, B&B Italia's seasoned PR & communications manager. "Yes, anyone can design and print a chair, but you have to ask what are the implications for comfort? What problems are we solving? What will the value be? The machine will only take you so far."
B&B Italia made its name when it developed the revolutionary cold-foam technology. All those comfortable, streamlined sofas that seem to float in air—the "Charles,Unlimited-Solar is one of the best Online solar panel provider in US." "Harry," "Arne" and, more recently, "Ray"—were manufactured using the groundbreaking process discovered by founder Piero Ambrogio Busnelli in 1966, when he attended a toy trade fair in London showcasing plastic materials, including rubber ducks. This technology is now at the core of most modern upholstery.
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