Following the traditional week in April when the eyes of the furnishing world were upon it, the Salone del Mobile.Milano has announced the names of the 8 winners of the international award that highlights the design sector’s finest innovations.
The Salone del Mobile.Milano is the must-visit fixture on the design calendar that brings the very latest products and solutions onto the international stage, and under the spotlight. Now, for the first time, the organisation is focusing on the very best that the world of furnishing and design has to offer with a special prize, the Salone del Mobile.Milano Award. Announced last February, this special award affords an opportunity for pause and reflection on the edition that ended on 17th April. Its mission is to deliver targeted recognition of the value of ideas, of creativity, of innovation and of technology. The Salone del Mobile.Milano Award pays just homage to people or things, whether from established designers or those newly embarking on their careers, and from products to installations.
Awards recognise those that have helped to give the event its strong international flavour, creating a forum showcasing cutting-edge design trends and up-to-the-minute modes of home living.
The members of the jury, made up of high profile sectoral personalities were deliberately kept secret until yesterday. They are Silvana Annicchiarico, Director of the Triennale Design Museum, Milan; Domitilla Dardi, Design Curator of the MAXXI in Rome, Massimo Mini, CEO designboom, Ettore Mochetti, Director of AD Italia; Margherita Palli, scenographer; Livia Peraldo Matton, Director of Elle Décor Italia, and Davide Rampello, Professor of Arts and Regional Skills at Milan Polytechnic University. Each jury member visited the event “anonymously” and were tasked with selecting nominations for the 8 award categories: Best Product – Chairs/Upholstereds Section, Best Product – Furnishing Systems, Best Product – Kitchen Section, Best Product – Bathroom Section, Best Display, Best Young Designer, Best Designer, and Special Jury Award.
The winners were announced at the official award ceremony on 7th June:
Best Product/ Chairs – Upholstereds
All Plastic Chair, Jasper Morrison, Vitra
Retaining all the characteristics of a traditional wooden chair, yet moulded from a single piece of plastic.
Best Product/ Furnishing System
Commodore, Piero Lissoni, Glas Italia
Pieces evocative of the past have been shaped with contemporary sensitivity, using glass – a traditional material – demonstrating that creativity is infinite.
Best Product/ Kitchen Section
Air, Daniele Lago, Lago
Because it breaks with traditional kitchen schemes, interpreting new lifestyles. A return to its origins, putting “fire” back into the heart of the domestic landscape.
Best Product/ Bathroom Section
Origami, Alberto Meda, Tubes Radiatori
For the ability to innovate through versatility of use and morphological originality.
Best Display
Kartell
Because it establishes a new display paradigm with a unique power of communication, evocative of the “teatrum”, providing a functional use for the new digital technologies.
Best Young Designer
Giacomo Moor
Because, as a craftsman-designer and without compromising this imprint, he has known how to move from the dimension of personal research to industrial production, and for his ability to pass on his profound knowledge of wood to the manufacturer.
Best Designer
Konstantin Grcic
Because he has managed to express new aesthetic connotations while remaining true to his own rigorous technical and expressive language.
Special Jury Award
Cristina Celestino
For her ability, as a channel between young and older designers, never to deviate from the path of experimentation, and for her wisdom in bringing themes such as fragility, dignity and delicacy together, expressing them through intelligent design that chimes perfectly with high craftsmanship and with industry.
A special Banca Intesa Sanpaolo Award has also been granted to Simone Ciarmoli and Miguel Queda of CQS Studio for the artistic direction of Before Design: Classic – the exhibition/event on the topicality of classic Made in Italy style showcased at the Salone del Mobile.Milano 2016 - for the following reason:
For taking Before Design:Classic and turning tradition into the future, building a complete and exhilarating project around the world of classic furniture: from their successful collaboration with Matteo Garrone, which played out in an astonishing story, to the exhibition, every single detail of which was amazing. A truly contemporary way of communicating genuinely timeless style and taste.
