This week marked the 53rd edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. Hundreds of exhibitors showcased an endless display of the latest international design products and home-furnishings. Among them included a variety of designed items envisioned by some of our favorite architects. Continue after the break to preview some of the most talked about architect-designed products featured this week at the Milan Design Week 2014.
Benedetta Tagliabue for Passoni Nature: Sofa ‘BOTAN’
A comfortable wood and fabric seat whose components join like the petals of a flower, producing endlessly harmonious, balanced combinations, inspired by nature.
David Adjaye for Knoll: The Washington Skeleton and Skin
David Adjaye's cantilevered chairs establish a play between propping and balancing, so that they are simultaneously functional and sculptural. Washington Skeleton is reduced to a fine geometric lattice while its inverted counterpoint, Skin, offers a colorful envelope to the same form.
Zaha Hadid for Citco: Tela
Tela is a shelving system characterized by an interesting dichotomy: the solidity of the black granite of which it is composed seemingly dissipates with the elongated cantilevers. At the centre of the configuration, its structural core, are the interweaved shelves which appear to open and unfold from a single surface to follow parallel trajectories. The design integrates the powerful dynamic forces inherent to cantilevered systems.
UNStudio for Artifort: Gemini
Gemini comprises two asymmetrically-designed seat elements and a small matching table to offer plenty of scope for variation.
Daniel Libeskind for Poliform: Web
Just like the Internet allows users to browse and use a collection of contents which are connected to each other by links, WEB - with its alternating blocks and voids - presents a brand new bookcase concept with a strong visual impact and devised for the most disparate uses.
Nendo for Emeco: The SU Collection
Su, a traditional Japanese concept meaning minimal, served as the primary inspiration for this new collection of stools and tables made from reclaimed materials.
MVRDV for Sixinch: Vertical Village
The Vertical Village: a self-organized and initiated manner of city building inspired by richness of informality found in East Asian settlements prior to being overcome by economically-driven block towers.
Charles & Ray Eames (1958) for Vitra: Aluminium Chair EA 101, EA 103, EA 104
Vitra has now launched models EA 101, 103 and 104 that belonged to the original 1958 product family and was first marketed as the Aluminium Dining Chairs, expanding the selection of chairs in the Aluminium Group with models that are smaller, lighter and brighter.
Nendo: print-chair
A chair whose surface mixes two different patterns, created by printing woodgrain patterns onto wood with an already distinctive grain.
Daniel Libeskind for Lasvit: ICE
A bold, geometric chandelier that achieves a ‘one-of-a-kind’ luminosity through the delicate and fluid quality of hand-blown glass.
Compare this year's participation with the top architect-designed products of the Milan Design Week 2013.
