Salone Internazionale del Mobile

“You can’t judge a book by its cover.” – English idiom

The world’s most important design fair for me, the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, just celebrated another furniture preview this year from April 22 through 27. Prior to my passionate affair and career with hospitality design, I attended the Salone del Mobile as a means for inspiration. It is an event that which the entire city of Milan gets involved and celebrates their progressive views on architecture and design. For me, I find it a necessary excursion.

Just to give you a small reference on how large the show is, 1298 exhibitors and 348,452 visitors participated in 2008. To give you a reasonable connection, ICFF, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, had 600 exhibitors and 25,000 visitors in 2008. Regardless, I simply prefer to attend the fair in Milan for its vast range of inspirational opportunities. That and I get to visit Italy.

After numerous visits, I have developed my own disciplinary pace while observing each venue: quickly and precisely. First, I look at each exhibitor’s façade, and instantly decide to strip away details of the displayed items. I took over 600 images this year, and I intend to share with you the best of these photos in separate parts in the coming weeks. This week I present a collection of first glances of notable facades and vignettes.

Some exhibitors were consistent with previous years; others, vastly different. As I observed, obviously coordinated with feature designs, many facades spoke about being organic and engaged nature elements: bluntly incorporated trees, botanicals, and moss—lots of mosses. My snap shots are not focused on only showing you the nature elements; I am exemplifying the facades as a screen or a filter element, which helps viewers to understand the concepts offered by the designers as they walk down corridor after corridor of each exhibit hall.