The Aesthetics of our Future Cocoons
My trend report from Milan Design Week, and how designers interpret today’s world to create tomorrow’s homes.
Full of eagerness and a satisfied appetite (you do know how great Italian food is, right?) I came back from Milan Design Week inspired by the future of living spaces. Even though Italy is currently facing economic difficulties, the design world continues to reinvent itself and wasn’t shy to show it off in Milan. Animated by the end of the Scandinavian trends, I saw an interesting renewal: one full of poetry, green thinking and a certain love of the Brut and industrial aesthetics.
Will our houses be made of straw?
A concept is often brought to the world when a designer discovers a material or a technique, so let’s follow this process and start with the materials that were present at the fair. The first one? Surprisingly, not a new patent registered out of Silicon Valley … just good ol’ marble. At design week, marble was present in all its forms: from a solid block table, to a carpet, to the Knoll stand that was entirely covered in it. The second material, one that is very eco-friendly and dates back to the Renaissance Age: terracotta. My favorite use was the experiential modules of SHoP presented by the University of Milan. Lastly, walnut was, by far, the most popular species when it comes to wood.
Comfort and warmth to dress your new couch
When it comes to textiles, two protagonists seemed to trend across design week, and one comes with a wave of nostalgia. Velvet was everywhere, from the dark-blue couch of Edra to the garish green couch of Neue Wiener Werkstätte. Velvet is a perfect fit for the future of homes because of its ability to be customised with various colour options yet stay relevant and on-trend (the abundance of choice in Kvadrat being a good marker of this observation). The other popular textile is another throwback material: tweed. While it’s not the greatest texture to touch, it does procure a warm feeling and a sense of robustness that designers seemed to favour this year. With a hint of a vivid colour, the vintage material was made contemporary.
A nod to somber colour palette
The trending colours when it comes to home design? Dark greys and browns, assuredly! While we have been used to seeing bright colours when it comes to our interiors, this year brought in somber shades without fear of being oppressive or invasive. Could it be related to the austere and disappointing time we are living in? Maybe, but it surprised me (and made the thoughtfully crafted furniture pop).
Round lines and subtle supports
Straight lines and acute angles had their time in the past, but they likely won’t be tomorrow’s predominance. Instead, the furniture that attendees tended to gravitate toward had round and reassuring curvy silhouettes placed in tension with the dark and rough settings in which they were displayed. To support those generous volumes, designers associated them with very thin and long tubes made out of various materials (gold, silver and copper were the majority) to humanise and weaken them — giving us no choice but to fall in love with them.
Say goodbye to the Scandinavian hygge …
… And say hello to Brut and industrial. The trend revealing itself through Alyx, HPC, Off White and A-Cold-Wall seems to be bigger than fashion and appears to have soaked into the design world. As a matter of fact, several furniture makers made the choice to set the mood of their collection or stand with a bare and industrial aesthetic. The best examples would be the brand new con.fort chair from Opinion Ciatti, the revamped couch of Konstantin Grcic or once again Knoll’s stand which was completely on-trend by imprisoning itself within wire fence and exposing technical foam.
Other manifestations to note
Virtual reality is more accessible now than ever. In the satellite hall (dedicated to young talents), Olivia Lee delighted Design Week visitors with a simple tweak: a carpet that kept the user in a defined area.
To continue, even though wires might not exist a few years from now, an interesting idea piqued my curiosity: why keep trying to hide them (and failing to do so) if you could expose them and treat them as a real element from your decoration? Andreu World had asked this question and came up with the inventive design below:
I lived design for a full three days and it really gave me a different perspective on tomorrow’s home. How will designers quench this thirst for technology to be further embedded in our lives? What form it will take? How will robots affect the layout and aesthetics of our homes? Will the decline of meat consumption impact the way we design our kitchens? With the percentage of people living in cities growing exponentially, will designers start thinking about how to insert more plants in our urban flats so we can get the quota of nature all human being needs? I’m excited to discover — and watch — these answers unfold in our future living environments.
Want to talk any of these questions? Have more questions? Email me at maxime.couturier@lpk.com.
Copywriter: Cori Sherman
