Salone del Mobile / Un-built
KoozArch’s presents its new digital editorial project during this year's Salone Internazionale del Mobile.
Through formats that range from opinionated columns to inspirational interviews and thought provoking essays as well as its rich archipelago of images, the platform pledges to continue to explore and challenge the realm of the un-built as tool for critical thinking, as research for action and as ground for virtual world making. As site specific installation within the context of the furniture fair, the former three definitions of the un-built will be used to critically examine and explore the event and the trade-fair typology.
To date, the Milanese Design Week is an extremely commercial endeavour whose events cover a net area of almost 210,000 square metres at the Rho Fiera Milano fairgrounds, showcasing more than 2,300 of the most dynamic and creative companies on the global market and attracting more than 350,000 visitors from 181 countries. Beyond the limits of the fair, the design week is also characterised by the "Fuori Salone", a series of capillary events taking place within the urban fabric of the city. Now in its 60th edition, the fair has remained, to a great extent unchanged, with its scope being largely limited to the selling of objects rather than the presentation and exploration of new ideas around the discipline of design and architecture. Within this context, and the framework of the architecture hub developed below the Central station, KoozArch aims to expand this discourse and engages the power of the un-built to critically analyse the unique conditions of the trade-fair beyond the physical commercialisation of objects. The ambition being: to analyse the fair's impact on the city both from a social and economic perspective, to explore its potential status as space for both personal and commercial exchanges within the virtual and to challenge the Fuori Salone as site which gives space to critical architecture and design practices. To this end, the platform collaborates with creatives Alvar Altissimo [tool for critical thinking], (ab)Normal [ground for virtual world making] and UNLESS [research for action] in developing a series of projections with the ambition of weaving a discourse and debate around the business of ideas rather than products.
Alvar Aaltissimo will extend his previous considerations on Case Milanesissime, critically and humorously engaging with the city of Milan, its temporary inhabitation model (both at an urban and domestic scale) during the exceptional event of the Design Week. In specific, the project will explore the “Nolli map” to tackle the paradoxes and contradictions of the hyper densification that occurs in the city and its impact on its reception spaces such as hotels, Airbnbs and rented apartments.
Read on koozarch.com: "The Nolli Salone", essay by Alvar Aaltissimo
(ab)Normal will continue its multidisciplinary exploration of design and architecture to engage with the unique condition of the Salone del Mobile trade fair as a space for financial and creative exchange, envisioning the future of such typology within the gaming industry. The collective will explore the potential offered by digital environments for such temporary events, taking the Salone as a prototype to propose alternative scenarios for "trading" in a virtual world.
Read on koozarch.com: "Mod. Salone del Mobile", essay by (ab)Normal
UNLESS will present "#SpeakUpForAntarcticaNow", an advocacy campaign developed throughout the city of Berlin with the ambition of raising awareness on the Antarctic and mobilising the public in speaking up for our only continent with no indigenous population via the signing of three petitions. To this end, the non-profit agency for change, will directly explore the potentialities of the Fuori Salone, to engage the public in pivotal environmental and political topics and how architectural research can inform new forms of activism and policy making.
Read on koozarch.com: "#SpeakUpForAntarcticaNow", conversation with UNLESS/Giulia Foscari
With the ambition of preserving and exhibiting the unique character of the tunnels which once hosted fruit and vegetable markets still present at the turn of the eighties and nineties, as well as reflecting on the very notion of the larger project of re-qualification of these which is under underway, the installation (developed in collaboration with Giga Workshop) will rely on the use of rented devices from the construction industry and up-cycled textiles. Once ended, the installation will be swiftly dismantled whilst continue to endure within the in-finite space of the digital platform as critical debate on the un-built fair.
Info
Project | KoozArch
Exhibition Design | KoozArch & Giga Workshop
Exhibitors | (ab)Normal, Alvar Aaltissimo, UNLESS
Web-design | Studio Vedet
Sponsors | Artemide and Freitag
Venue | Drop City
Dates | 7th -12th June 2022
About the Curator
KoozArch is an experimental digital platform researching the Un-built Imaginary. We believe it is necessary to raise the question “What If”? What if we inhabited our planet differently? While most projects do not survive the perilous journey from drawing board to construction site, one thing is clear: the ideas they represent can prove even more critical and provocative of established contemporary concepts and systems. Beyond the realm of the built, imaginative realms are the foundation of revolutionary ideas through which we can radically question and provoke conversations around necessary structural changes in and around the discipline of architecture and design.
About the Exhibitors
(ab)Normal is a multidisciplinary practice set to explore different realms - i.e. design, architecture, scenography, illustration, novel - with a particular focus on Architectural Representation. Photorealism is carefully deconstructed and rearranged in illustrations based on Normal vectors, avoiding the traditional structure that builds the contemporary visual description of a space. Hence, this project is both scientific in its method and evocative for its thematic background.
Alvar Aaltissimo is an architectural designer of XXI century, who investigates the relation between of architecture, satire, memes and communication. Alvar Aaltissimo looks to topics that are therefore transversal to architecture and tries to counter the volatility of "disposable" social content, proposing structured projects that merge visual references from popular culture and architecture. In 2021 he published "Progetto per il Salvataggio dell’Estate Italiana 2020" and "Case Milanesissime" with Corraini Edizioni.
UNLESS is an agency of change. It is a non-profit organization founded on the belief that unless cross-disciplinary knowledge is urgently catalysed with the ambition of disseminating data-based research on the contemporary planetary crisis, the Earth will be irreversibly damaged for future generations. Founded by Giulia Foscari in 2019, UNLESS’ collaborative practice engages specialists from the arts, the humanities and the sciences. UNLESS operates alongside its alter ego, UNA.