Salone del Mobile.Milano 2016: Interpreting the Classic

Before Design: Classic presents a different concept of the classical, resting not simply on the past but impacting powerfully on the present, laying the foundations for a new vision of the future. The exhibition-event will tell the story of classic Made in Italy taste, seen as a crosscutting category of inhabitation, timeless and therefore highly contemporary.

The Salone del Mobile has entrusted the narration of the multiple lives of the classical – a style drawn from history and great taste and cultural heritage – to the creative vision of the Ciarmoli Queda practice, based in Milano, with its international experience of major projects linked to architecture, interior design, the visual arts and artistic direction.

Inside the exhibition space – 800 m2 inside the Salone – Simone Ciarmoli and Miguel Queda have conceived a multisensory layout, with huge freedom of expression and great rigour, for displaying the different components of classic taste in its unswerving topicality, its balance between yesterday and today, between the memory of things past and a powerful inclination towards contemporary art.

An integral part of the exhibition-event is a short film by Matteo Garrone, one of the most highly esteemed Italian filmmakers of the last few years, who accepted invitation to bring his poetic and powerful perspective to the project with great enthusiasm. With photography by Nicolai Bruel, this short, daring and visionary film aims to express an idea of the classical, deliberately overturning all cultural barriers with dreamlike charm, evocative pictures and glimpses into a future laid bare to the imagination.

The concept behind the exhibition layout is drawn from the classical Palladian villa, in which a series of spaces follow on from each other, gradually revealing surprising multimedia and sensorial installations. The heart of the exhibition – conserved in different rooms, each devoted to a different theme – is a theatre, its powerful innovative content resting on tradition, inspired by the Olympic Theatre at Sabbioneta. An “ancient theatre”, as the Olympic Theatre was also known, which becomes the central nucleus, the reference on which the entire conceptual edifice of the installation is founded: a sort of solid monolith that brings together and amalgamates references to the Classics and to modern architecture, finally incorporating the short film, which will be played on a loop inside the installation, transporting visitors into a suspended atmosphere, providing them with a unique experience.

The concept of Before Design: Classic is also perfectly conveyed by the design of the logo. Created by the illustrator and calligrapher Alex Troucht, the logo is both classical and modern: encapsulating extreme elegance and maximum simplicity, instigating a powerfully expressive dialogue between the different  typefaces.

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