Furniture designers embrace sustainability at Milan Design Week, with 3Rs – reduce, reuse recycle – to the fore as much as 3D
From Philippe Starck to Timothy Oulton and Enrico Marone Cinzano, designers at the year’s most influential design event, the Salone del Mobile, showcased eco-friendly furniture solutions
The focus was on sustainability at the world’s most influential design event this year, with organisers of Milan’s Salone del Mobile launching their first ever manifesto, devoted to the issue, and several exhibitors showing designs that minimised or eliminated plastic.
The week-long fair, held since 1961, is the place where leading brands and up-and-coming designers show their newest and most innovative products, and the attention paid to environmental issues at the event was evident.
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The unprecedented manifesto from the organisers of April’s fair called on the design industry to improve innovation and sustainability, and to embrace the circular economy. In practice, this means exploring new solutions for recycling materials and working with sustainable natural materials, keeping resources in use for as long as possible, and recovering and regenerating materials at the end of their life.
While a great deal of plastic was still on show, some designers and brands were feted for taking eco-friendly approaches that went beyond merely paying lip service to the need for more sustainability.
At Ventura Future, Japanese designer Kodai Iwamoto’s Plastic Blowing project transforms cheap PVC pipes used in plumbing into contemporary vases. The process is similar to the traditional way of making hand-blown glass. The pipes are warmed to a soft consistency before being placed in a wooden mould and inflated by blowing down a tube.
