For its tenth anniversary, Nilufar Depot is exploring the allure of live-action making with an in-situ intervention by Martino Gamper.

It is part of a wider trend that has seen the nature of the design exhibition evolve in recent years. No longer are brands and galleries satisfied with staid presentations of furniture and objects, no matter how artfully they’ve been set-designed or styled. Instead, these institutions are turning to performance to inject energy and draw crowds.

There was Formafantasma’s ‘Staging Modernity’ for Cassina, among a number of performance-focused shows during 2025’s Milan Design Week, in which actors sang and danced an original musical around a reissued set of Charlotte Perriand pieces. Just last week, Delvis presented its latest exhibition with a meditative performance by the artist Jirah.

Martino Gamper for Nilufar Depot's tenth anniversary

For the presentation, Gamper set up shop in the central atrium of Nilufar Depot – a three-storey former silverware factory on Milan’s Via Lancetti –with his workshop tools in tow. Similar to his Gamper-Ponti project from 2007 – in which he deconstructed and remixed a bedroom set from the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento by Gio Ponti into a new collection of collaged tables, lights, mirrors and chairs – visitors watched as Gamper broke down and rebuilt a wooden bed by Franco Albini and a carved wooden chair with a bright purple velvet seat by Ico Parisi.

Throughout the day, the typically hushed gallery atmosphere was disrupted with the sounds of whirring saws and the occasional burst of sawdust in the light-filled air. Working with offcut plywood veneers from Alpi, Gamper added small platforms on each side of the chair 'to rest a drink on', he says. On the bed, he created a mosaic-like effect by inserting a colourful veneered plywood board within the solid wooden frame. 'I’m cutting things away and revealing details,' he says.

This year marks over 18 years of collaboration between Gamper and Nilufar; a rare feat in designer-gallerist partnerships. 'I remember 12 years ago telling Nina she should open up one of her warehouses,' Gamper recalled during a pause between cuts. 'Fast-forward over a decade, and Nina called me and said she had a few pieces in storage that needed some love – pieces that are not masterpieces but have some heritage.' Beyond the impromptu stage, a procession of Gamper’s ‘Off Cut Tables’ snaked around the atrium’s perimeter and between its industrial columns.

Book: celebrating ten years of Nilufar Depot

To coincide with the anniversary, Nilufar is publishing Nilufar Depot: The First Decade, a retrospective volume featuring previously unseen installation images and essays by journalist Annamaria Sbisà – a keepsake substitute for those who missed the sawdust and spectacle in person.

Throughout October, design enthusiasts and PAD and Frieze attendees in the know have been excitedly making their way to a quiet residential street in London’s Marylebone. Here, they step through the door of an ordinary brown-bricked townhouse into the colourful world of Italian-born, London-based designer Martino Gamper.

Almost twenty years’ worth of Gamper's distinctive work is laid out across the Georgian property in staged room sets—including a music room, games room, study, bedroom, living and dining space. Angular furniture pieces covered in a patchwork of laminate and teak, hybridised tables and chairs and temptingly tactile hooks, vessels and lamps are all layered within the home’s neoclassical interiors, creating a joyful tapestry of colour, pattern and eras.

Martino Gamper presents 'Before; After & Beyond’

Titled ‘Before, After & Beyond’, this immersive showcase marks the designer's first full retrospective since the beginning of his career in the mid-2000s. The idea came about following a conversation with former Wallpaper* Editor-in-Chief Sarah Douglas. 'Sarah said, ‘people don’t really know the extent of your work’', Gamper recalls. 'She said ‘I hardly know it, and I’ve known you for twenty years.’' At the same time, Gamper had been going through the mammoth task of archiving and cataloging his work, so a retrospective felt like a natural development.

To bring his vision to life, he worked with Douglas, refining the details, editing the selection and planning new work. From the outset, Gamper was clear he wanted to display his oeuvre in a domestic setting to create a more relaxed mood for the showcase. 'I see so many design shows where people make furniture and then try to present it like art on plinths. I always find it very tedious, because it doesn't tell the story,' he explains. ‘I like telling stories and my pieces are domestic; they are tables and chairs, and they are meant to be used. They have a function.'

Enter Swiss Philanthropist and art collector Maja Hoffman, who has collaborated with Gamper many times over the duration of his career to date. Learning that he was seeking a space for a show in London, she generously offered the use of her 1770s townhouse, designed by Robert and James Adam, featuring Rudolf Stingel-designed carpets and a copper-gilded ceiling on the first floor.

In Gamper’s showcase, we find private commissions, museum projects, industrial designs, unseen work and brand-new creations made especially for the show, including colourful glass lamps, mirrors, a decadent purple velvet bed and a mirror-lined drinks cabinet made from reclaimed teak. The black and white carpet in the games room was a collaboration with Milan-based CC-Tapis and another in the music room was made by Swedish brand Bolon. A site-specific geometric, travertine fireplace, which Gamper created to replace one stolen from the house years ago, will remain permanently.

These new pieces sit seamlessly alongside Gamper's earlier works, such as his magnificent chairs from the 2007 exhibition ‘100 Chairs in 100 Days,’ where he transformed discarded chairs into entirely new forms through playful reassembly. Gamper’s approach is unified by his experimental mindset, characterised by spontaneous creation and recontextualisation of the work of design masters—including his reinterpretation of Gio Ponti and Carlo Mollino furniture. His inventive use of materials and colours transcends decoration, serving instead to emphasise and bring out the unique form and character of each piece.

Born in Merano, a town in the German-speaking South Tyrol region of northern Italy, in 1971, Gamper started as an apprentice with a furniture maker in Merano, before studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and then design at the Royal College of Art in London, from where he graduated in 2000. His background in both traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design has served him well and is clearly reflected in his experimental and hands-on approach to creating furniture and objects.

Gamper’s success and influence in the contemporary design world is extensive. He has worked with prestigious brands and institutions and has shown in prominent museums and galleries, yet his style and approach remain grounded and consistent. 'What I’m really enjoying about the show is that I can’t tell which work is old work and which is new,' he reflects. 'The work is like a continuous kind of research, and I think that's, for me, an achievement; it makes it feel timeless in a way.'

Although Gamper now works with three workshops—a joinery workshop in Italy, one in Kent and one next to his studio in Hackney— and has a team of staff, you’ll still find him busy making or scoping out reclamation yards for materials that he can craft into a cabinet door or table leg. Making and material exploration remains at the heart of his practice; he still finds thrill in transforming found materials that are typically perceived as kitsch or dated—think lino, laminate, cherry, teak or formica—into finely crafted pieces of furniture. 'I'm always interested in what is considered kitsch, what is considered contemporary, what is ugly, what is beautiful—it's a subtle line. If you buy brand new materials, it feels a bit like a blank piece of paper somehow, but working from something already existing, there's something to hold on to or to inspire you.'

When we catch up with Gamper, ‘Before, After & Beyond’ is midway through its run, and he’s delighted with the response. Long lunches and dinners have unfolded around his tessellated laminate ‘Lazy Ponti’ and ‘Almost Ponti’ tables in the dining/living area, fostering many catch-ups with colleagues and friends across each room. Gamper smiles as he recalls visitors’ reactions: 'Their eyes get really large, and they say, ‘Wow, did you really make all of this?’' After such a busy period and creating such a vast volume of work—resulting from years of 'saying yes to everything,' he laughs—Gamper admits he’s ready to embrace a slower pace. 'I would like to spend time thinking about my next steps. Maybe do less,' he ventures. 'Do less, by doing more, in a way.'

'Before, After & Beyond' runs until October 26, 2024, at 11 Mansfield Street, London, W1G 9NZ martinogamper.com

You could never accuse designer and artist Martino Gamper of being idle. Audacious? Yes. Precious? No. Few individuals have put such a volume and variety of work into the world with their bare hands. His curiosity to experiment through doing is impressive, voracious, perhaps even concerning. How restless is that mind? How raw are those fingers? While a comprehensive retrospective of Gamper’s projects is opening in London in October 2024, a new pearlescent pink book from his publishing house Dente-de-Leone has landed with a thud in time for summer.

Hook Book – almost 1000 catalogues the indefatigable Italian’s recent focus on – well, the clue is in the title. It is a beautiful object in itself, designed by Åbäke and bearing all the hallmarks of the design studio’s playful sophistication. In a glorious panoply of papers and printing techniques, Gamper’s thousand-odd (and sometimes they are odd) hooks are laid bare. The sheer range is mind-boggling in itself. Each hook is a minor feat; together, the collection presents as a taxonomy of materials and processes – a single archetype extrapolated into smithereens.

Gamper got properly hooked on hooks in New Zealand, where he tends to spend winter. An early collection of hooks was exhibited as ‘Hookaloti’ – a show in 2019 at Michael Lett in Auckland. A second show, in 2023 at Anton Kern in New York, gave Gamper the impetus to rapidly expand his hook library. That show had the beautiful title ‘I Am Many Moods’, courtesy of Gamper’s friend, the author Deborah Levy, who also penned a quietly profound text for Hook Book, titled: ‘Attachment Theory; holding and letting go’.

Gamper’s world is compelling. So when Hook Book arrived, we picked up the phone to find out more…

Why Martino Gamper is hooked on hooks

Wallpaper*: You are rigorous Martino!

Martino Gamper: The hooks were the easy part. Photographing and cataloguing everything for the book was far more laborious.

W*: The appeal of a hook is perhaps obvious, but I’m curious to hear what you like about them.

MG: I have always liked hanging things on hooks. I like to keep things off the floor. In 2011 I did a live-in residency show at Galleria Franco Noero in Turin. I moved in with nothing but a daybed and made all the furniture over the course of a month from my imagination. I really missed having anywhere to keep things – to hang things. Hooks.

Wallpaper*: I remember visiting you in 2007 in the early days of your ‘100 Chairs in 100 Days’ project, and even then most of your studio was hung on the walls on pegs and hooks and various mechanisms.

MG: That’s right. Hooks are simple objects but also ambiguous. They are sculptural, decorative and functional simultaneously. That’s quite a rare combination. They hold interesting space around them.

W*: Tell us about the material variety.

MG: It was a good excuse to play with different materials that I don’t know. I always like to push the limits of my knowledge and experience, but you have to have a good enough reason to use a new material. A hook is a fairly simple experiment in this case: make a 90-degree bend (or thereabouts) in anything and it can become a hook. Also it is a three-dimensional object, not a flat surface. All it has to do is hopefully be strong enough to hold something up.

W*: How do you feel when you see them in such a large volume, as at Anton Kern in New York?

MG: It was quite an overwhelming installation. I thought I had a concept but an empty white cube is a difficult challenge. I asked the team to close their eyes and take a marker and start plotting. We then drilled holes and installed, with a few tweaks. In retrospect it was almost too much – it can sometimes be hard to see the wood for the trees.

W*: You talk about relying on intuition in your practice and process. Please expand.

MG: I like to do first and think second. I need to get my hands into my projects and then work out what’s happened. You can overthink things in advance, but I find it makes more sense for me to post-rationalise than pre-determine. There’s too much complexity in life already. Keep things simple!

W*: Is there a material that surprised you?

MG: Cork is strangely difficult to work with. It’s very soft. You can’t really sculpt it, only sand it. You can’t really paint it either, it doesn’t easily take on colour or dye. Clay on the other hand I loved learning about. I made hooks in several excellent potteries in New Zealand. It’s a remarkable material. If you don’t get things right first time, even if you’ve fired it, you can grind it back down and start again. It has infinite possibility.

W*: Your books are fast becoming collectible objects too. How important is the book as part of your process and perhaps also your legacy?

MG: I’ve always loved books being part of my projects. Even at the Royal College of Art I made a book with Kajsa [Ståhl, from Åbäke] about corners. Photographing and documenting is a powerful way of communicating. I really believe in books and I believe they endure as physical objects. My book for ‘100 Chairs’ is handy for schools and universities, I’ve found. It helps as a tool to talk to students about different ways of thinking and working in design, hopefully opening eyes and minds at an important stage in their learning.

W*: And as for all those hooks – what happens next?

MG: They are on their way back from New York. They will appear in my show in October, and then I’m looking forward to them spreading out to people’s homes around the world. We have quite a few hooks at home. And I will keep making them, too.

Hook Book – Almost 1000, designed by Åbäke, published by Dente-de-Leone, £27 from dentdeleone.com and Waterstones

Martino Gamper chairs take centre stage at Haus Der Kunst, Munich (until 1 April 2024). Sitzung is an exhibition that sprung from the Italian designer's '100 Chairs in 100 Days' project, initially developed in 2006 as an exercise in creative composition and making. The designer used discarded chairs found on the street and reconfigured their forms to transform its aesthetic and functionality. 

'The process produced something like a three-dimensional sketchbook, a collection of possibilities,' said Gamper of the project. 'I also hope my chairs illustrate - and celebrate - the geographical, historical and human resonance of design: what can they tell us about their place of origin or their previous sociological context and even their previous owners? For me, the stories behind the chairs are as important as their style or even their function.'

Sitzung: Martino Gamper chairs at Haus Der Kunst, Munich

For the new exhibition at Haus Der Kunst, Gamper and his team made a series of chairs, placed in the Mittelhalle of the museum. 'For Haus der Kunst, the furniture will be made in a variety of ways including craft and industrial processes, using a huge range of materials,' says the designer.  The chairs will be experimental, fit for purpose but imperfect, rather than products they are vehicles to explore seating as a sculptural object.'

Visitors to the space are invited to reconfigure the designs, continuously transforming the entire space based on a series of rules set by Gamper. This way, the museum becomes a place of interaction and encounters, blurring the boundaries between visitors and displays.

'Chairs are parallel objects to our everyday life, they grow with us, they move with us, they help us create situation, gatherings, and sit down and reflect,' adds Gamper. 'I like to play with shapes and challenge my own formal language.'

The project is part of the museum's mission to change the way visitors can interact with its displays and exhibitions. 'The Mittelhalle of Haus der Kunst is an extraordinary space,' says Andrea Lissoni, the museum's artistic director. 'This collaboration between Martino Gamper and our curatorial and education teams gives us an opportunity to experiment with this important location, inviting everyone to be involved in literally creating their own space.'

Sitzung is on view at Haus Der Kunst until 1 April 2024

martinogamper.com
hausderkunst.de

Martino Gamper has been busy: his new exhibition in New York showcases over 700 works he has created in his studio, mostly hooks and vases. ‘Martino Gamper: I am Many Moods’ is on view at Anton Kern Gallery (until 11 August 2023) and offers a panoramic overview of the scope of the designer’s works, while highlighting the breadth of his oeuvre. 

'Martino Gamper: I am many Moods' at Anton Kern Gallery

‘Form follows function is a principle of design which suggests that the shape of an object should primarily relate to its intended purpose: this is not as limiting as it sounds,’ reads a note introducing the exhibition. To create this voluminous collection, Gamper has drilled, cast, carved, sawed, sanded, printed, extruded, chainsawed, blown, welded, cut, forged, torched, and torn a variety of materials, to create variations on a particularly functional theme. 

The displays show a variety of hooks – a motif Gamper has already experimented with in the past with great results, including a limited edition collection of sculptural hooks laser-cut from anodised aluminium. 

On the occasion of his ‘Hooked’ collection launch for Hem, Gamper said of the hook: ‘You can hang a light object, a heavy object, a fragile object, anything that doesn’t want to stand on the floor or on a table, but the hooks also lend presence to the room, they transform a wall.’

At the Anton Kern Gallery, the hooks – made of wood, metal, glass, steel, plastic, crystals, ceramics, bronze, aluminium, brass, stainless glass, cork, marble, stones, and branches – are shown in compositions, both curated and haphazard, in sizes that range from the mini to the extra, and mixed with furniture by Gamper (at times itself hanging from the hooks).

‘This might sound like a fight between materials, technique, and form; but in fact the mood is positive, the feeling exuberant,’ continues the gallery’s introduction. ‘The sheer number and variety of hooks and vases creates a poetic frenzy of excited chaos. Between a whittled stick and large cast bronze, the materials and techniques run the gamut between low and high. Here, there is an object for everyone.’

Anton Kern Gallery, 16 East 55th Street, New York, NY 10022 

antonkerngallery.com

martinogamper.com

A new boutique within central London department store Harrods is the first space to host an exclusive selection of Prada homeware pieces. The boutique – boasting an inlaid walnut version of the Italian brand’s signature chequered floor, complemented by pale green walls in tactile fabric – showcases a range of homeware designs. Among them is graphic porcelain inspired by interior design accents in the brand’s first store, which opened in 1913 within Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II; wave-like borosilicate glassware; and a new edition of hammered silver cutlery, first designed by Josef Hoffmann in 1905.

In September 2020, Harrods played host to Prada’s ‘Hideaway’ – a labyrinthine pop-up installation with walls and oblique shelves in pale poplar, which was an aesthetic evolution of the brand’s 2015 global window display concept, ‘Corners’. Both were the work of Italian designer Martino Gamper, whose preoccupation with materiality – often combining different woods and colours – has long chimed with Prada. ‘[Prada CEO] Patrizio Bertelli is also really interested in materiality,’ Gamper told us last year.

Make yourself at home with Prada and Martino Gamper

Gamper has also designed a selection of homeware pieces, which echo both his and Prada’s aesthetic DNA, ranging from chopping boards to vases, trays to coasters. He describes them as ‘simple forms with great details'. A series of hollow geometric vases is handmade from a variety of different hardwoods, including cherry, oak and walnut, their corners inlaid with splices of colourful laminate. Chopping boards in solid untreated Austrian larch – which does not affect the flavour of the food it touches – also feature bright laminate accents, in orange, blue, yellow and green. The designs reflect Gamper's interest in the corner as a concept. ‘Slicing the corner off of something is an idea that's interested me for a long time,’ he says. ‘Whenever I see something square I want to cut something away.’

Gamper’s Prada homeware creations also include a range of angular coasters, designed to be used as single pieces or combined into larger assemblages to hold a number of glasses at once. In a nod to Prada's history as a leather goods house, they are constructed in its signature Saffiano leather.

INFORMATION

harrods.com

prada.com

Seventeen designers and artists have been invited to reinterpret Dior’s ‘Medallion’ chair for the French house’s most significant presence at Milan’s Salone del Mobile to date. A roster pulled together from China, Korea, Japan, Lebanon, South Africa, UK, Holland, Italy and France includes Sam Baron, Nacho Carbonell, Pierre Charpin, Dimore Studio, Martino Gamper, India Mahdavi, Nendo, Ma Yansong, Tokujin Yoshioka and Pierre Yovanovitch.

The Dior Maison collection, under the creative direction of Cordelia de Castellane focuses on tabletop and decorative items, yet in November 2020 it launched the ‘Bonne Aventure’ card table and chairs. At first it might seem out of character to find chairs at Dior, but back in 1947 when Christian Dior opened his couture house, he turned to Victor Grandpierre to decorate the salon.

That original design scheme included grey and white armchairs and the oval-backed ‘Medallion’ chair used to seat guests at his fashion shows, both in a 1940s vision of the neoclassical Louis XVI style that the couturier loved. The armchair was immortalised in the 1955 Diorama and the 1958 Miss Dior perfume campaigns by illustrator René Grau. It has subsequently has become almost as iconic to the house as the ‘Bar’ jacket or Cannage pattern.

Showing from 5 September 2021, in Palazzo Citterio in Milan’s Brera neighbourhood, 17 designers have put their personal spin on the oval-backed Dior ‘Medallion’ chair. Around 30 chairs are exhibited, some as pairs or sets.

Dior ‘Medallion’ chair: 17 new designs go on display at Salone del Mobile 2021

Pierre Charpin has reduced the Dior ‘Medallion’ chair to the absolute minimum, with just an outline (that said it’s a particularly bold outline) in black metal resin and finished with a mirrored seat, for the user to look ‘at oneself before being looked at’.

Sam Baron’s ‘Ensemble(s)’ is made up of four pared-back chairs assembled together in a deliberately haphazard way. 

Nendo’s ‘Chaise Medaillon 3.0’ is made of two sheets of tempered glass, with the back and legs formed from a curve held in place with a shelf-like seat and the signature oval back rendered as a void, in a very pleasing interpretation.

Seoul-based Seungjin Yang has applied his signature balloon technique to ‘upholster’ the seat and back of his otherwise pretty faithful render of the chair, made entirely in epoxy resin.

India Mahdavi proposes a chair design close to the original in Dior grey lacquered wood, bringing her passion for craft and sense of colour through hand-embroidery from Kashmir in Djerba wool; each chair in her set of five is slightly different, and the designer calls them ‘a united tribe despite their individuality’.

Beirut-based designer Khaled El Mays has deconstructed, reinterpreted and reinvented the original, by extending the back, incorporating a straw-backed mirror and adding leather fringed feet.

Pierre Yovanovitch’s his and hers pair, ‘Monsieur et Madame Dior’, are crafted in bronze and upholstered with embroidered canvas in Dior’s oblique logo pattern, first developed by Marc Bohan in 1967, made expressly by Vermont in its Paris ateliers.

INFORMATION

Dior ‘Medallion’ chair, on show at Palazzo Citterio, from 5 September 2021. Opening hours: Saturday to Thursday, 10am – 7pm; Friday, 10am – 4pm

dior.com

ADDRESS

Palazzo Citterio
Via Brera 12
Milan, Italy

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‘Call Mr. wood!’ chuckles Martino Gamper on Facetime from his home country of Italy, when musing on his second collaborative project with Prada – a perspective-playing pop-up space titled ‘Hideaway’ at London’s Harrods. The Wallpaper* Design Award winner, who also created a limited edition cover for our April 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*217), first partnered with the Milanese label in 2015. The resultant ‘Corner’s’ was a global window display concept, rolled out to over 300 boutiques, celebrating the humble nook, using graphic installations formed from oak, maple and ebony. 

‘[Prada CEO] Patrizio Bertelli is also really interested in materiality,’ adds Gamper of the tactile focus on the immersive installation, which created from poplar, wraps around 90 sq m of Harrods’ ground floor. Evolving the concept of ‘Corners’ the installation forms a labyrinth of different walls and oblique shelves, where luxurious items from Prada’s A/W 2020 collection are displayed. These include soft cashmere sweaters and leather shoppers, quilted jackets and suiting. ‘We’ve continued the journey from a different angle,’ Gamper – whose often creates furniture with the corner in mind - adds. ‘This time, there’s more focus on perspectives.’

After receiving Prada’s commission, Gamper hopped on a train to San Zeno, where in it’s extensive Design Archive, 1:1 versions of all its retail projects and shop windows are housed, alongside architectural models, and a library of research materials, including wood, stone and glass. ‘It allowed me to get a real sense of the space, and visualise the Hideaway concept in 3D’, Gamper explains. ‘We wanted to treat the project as a full scale installation, rather than simply designing a white cube with pieces of furniture inside it.’

INFORMATION

harrods.com
prada.com
martinogamper.com

Studio Voltaire’s pop-up art and design store is taking up residence in London’s Mayfair, returning to the same space on 31 Cork Street it previously inhabited in 2016. From tomorrow, 26 September, over 150 new and exclusive artworks will be on sale at House of Voltaire, including limited-edition prints, clothing, homeware, furniture, books and objects by leading artists and designers.

In the same democratic spirit as Keith Haring’s Pop Shop and the Bloomsbury Group’s Omega Workshop, House of Voltaire endeavours to make art more accessible than ever to everyone. Linder Sterling has designed an exclusive capsule collection of tableware spanning dinner plates, napkins, tablecloths, glassware and ceramics in her characteristically explicit (sure to be a talking point among dinner party guests). Elsewhere, Ryan Gander has captured ‘the scent of the artist’s hearth’ in a heady candle, while the prospect of cleaning the kitchen has never quite seemed so appealing thanks to Wilma Johnson’s hand-painted dishwashing gloves.

Camille Henrot and Laure Provost are among the latest contributors to House of Voltaire’s ever-popular artist’s blankets, which also features lambswool editions by Michael Craig-Martin, Nicolas Party and more. Monster Chetwynd, Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley (who has a major show around the corner at the RA) have also donated unique artworks. Shoppers can also snap up bespoke homeware by Simone Rocha and Rottingdean Bazaar or special editions by the likes of Jeremy Deller, Cory Arcangel, Lisa Brice and Wolfgang Tillmans, with prices ranging from £1 to £60,000 (an Edmund de Waal artwork is the most expensive in the shop).

All proceeds directly support the charity’s exhibition and education programmes, and this year marks a pivotal moment in Studio Voltaire’s fundraising efforts. Its transformative £2.4 million scheme will provide 42 per cent more affordable artists’ studios and increase public spaces by 233 per cent. The Studio Voltaire Capital Project will also establish a dedicated learning and events space, two artists’ apartments, a public courtyard garden and café, and, more thrillingly, the first-ever permanent House of Voltaire in Clapham.

Eagle-eyed patrons at the Cork Street pop-up may also spot some familiar faces, as creative luminaries from the spheres of art, design, fashion and music will be guest shopkeeping and curating a series of special talks and events throughout the store’s run. If a pilgrimage to London isn’t on the cards before 21 December, then head to House of Voltaire’s website instead where all special editions and products are available with worldwide shipping.

INFORMATION

House of Voltaire, 26 September – 21 December. houseofvoltaire.org

ADDRESS

31 Cork Street
London W1S 3NU

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Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the winner of them all? At the awards ceremony celebrating Venice Glass Week, the answer to that riddle was Barbini Specchi Veneziani, the almost century-old artisanal mirror producer based out of the island of Murano, who scooped the inaugural Bonhams Prize for the best project participating in the festival.

Curated by local architectural studio Babau Bureau and third-generation glassmaker Pietro Barbini, the Venetians tapped the likes of Martino Gamper, Bethan Laura Wood, Lucia Massari and Sara Forte to create a series of spelling-binding mirrors that fuse the artisans’ ancient craft with the designers’ shared witty sensibilities. ‘This sprang from the desire to show that Murano glass art continues to evolve and develop on the back of its tradition,’ Barbini explains of the exhibition, entitled ‘Materia Eterea’ (Ethereal Matter).

Each designer was given free artistic reign and the expertise of an artisan to create their contribution. Martino Gamper took a customarily colourful approach, overlapping shaded fields around a transparent centre. Wood ‘decided to follow her passion for the world of fake food,’ describes Barbini of her wavy-edged piece. Combing modern water jet cutting techniques and traditional detailing, she was able to ‘emphasise the way in which this ancient tradition reflects the changes that have occurred in contemporary craftsmanship.’

Local designer Lucia Massari took a second look at the traditional Venetian mirror by mixing elements typically used to create frames — decorative flowers, leaves, garlands and rosettes — in a Mr Potato Head-style face that had a life of its own.

Staged within Palazzetto Tito, the headquarters of the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Babau Bureau was responsible for the install: ‘We decided to transform the glass works into characters living inside a traditional Venetian palace,’ they explain. ‘We tried to give to each work a specific place to stay, in a constant narration and dialogue between the rooms. So, ironically, glass faces are speaking to each other, reflections coming from the palace's windows are reflected by the mirrors and so on.’

Discussing the Bonhams prize, Barbini emphasises his optimism: ‘For us, this award is confirmation that what we had the right idea when we set out last year [to create this exhibition] and that all our effort was worth it,’ he explains, reflecting on the road to the big win. ‘This prize will encourage us to keep going with tradition and innovation, those two characteristics that have always made Murano and its glass art production great.’

INFORMATION

bonhams.com; theveniceglassweek.com; aavbarbini.it

In the midst of the selfie era, it’s more important than ever to dig down into the deepest, sometimes darkest, depths of our own identities. At least, that’s what design studio M-L-XL believes. It will explore the idea for an exhibition it is curating, entitled ‘Masters of Disguise’, taking place at the former Skandium store in Brompton at this year’s London Design Festival.

The likes of Michael Marriott, Bethan Laura Wood, Martino Gamper, Studio Furthermore and Marco Campardo of M-L-XL have all taken a period of inward reflection and are presenting their findings in the form of a handmade mask, crafted from found objects and recycled materials.

The show will be brought to life by a playful performative dinner, during which the designers will all wear their masks at the table as a way of choosing whether to hide or share what lies beneath.

As originally featured in the October 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*247)

INFORMATION

‘Masters of Disguise’ will be showing from 14 September – 15 October. seedslondon.com

ADDRESS

35-36 Thurloe Place
London SW7

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Ask anyone in town for Salone del Mobile, and they will tell you that Nina Yashar’s Nilufar Gallery is a must-see stop on the design week trail. Whether your visit provides much-needed respite from the constant slew of furniture launches, or a conceptual moment in the midst of a product-heavy week, the gallery’s shows always stand out from the rest of the week’s events.

Not to be confused with the Nilufar Depot, which houses Yashar’s extensive collection and was made open to the public in 2015, Nilufar Gallery is located in the Quadrilatero della Moda – an area of Milan mostly populated by luxury fashion boutiques and upmarket restaurants. The success of both Nilufar outposts lies within the difference between them. While the Nilufar Depot staged an ambitious exhibition of emerging designers, curated Valentina Ciuffi/Studio Vedèt, the inner-city gallery has an undeniable air of refinement.

On the occasion of this year’s Milan Design Week, the gallery played host works by Bethan Laura Wood and Osvaldo Borsani, and provided a late-night spot by India Mahdavi, Chez Nina II (following the success of its first edition last year). But most impressive was its windowed facades, filled with a collaborative installation by designers Michael Anastassiades and Martino Gamper, and artist Brigitte Niedermair, titled ‘Piano Nobile’.

Technically, the project is a continuation of Gamper and Niedermair’s Screenshot piece – originally completed in 2017 as a contemplation on ‘art through the medium of digital technologies’. But having caught Yashar’s eye back then, she proposed to the pair that they create a ‘total Screenshot’ for this year’s Salone, whereby the artwork becomes design and presents itself as a full interior, rather than a wall-mounted work.

To enhance the multilayered experience, Anastassiades was brought on board as the third puzzle piece – crafting five lamps to illuminate the sets. As with the original Screenshot piece, the Piano Nobile installation made use of Dedar fabric. Works by the likes of Sol LeWitt, Otto Dix and Paul Klee were reinterpreted through abstract patterns crafted from panels of the cotton satin. The result looked similar to a colour chart, with key tones and shades represented through the reams of cloth.

‘I thought about historic Venetian buildings and how in the past artists were the absolute protagonists of the space for living in,’ said Niedermair. ‘Today, we can recreate that same vision brimming with cultural references, in a contemporary way.’ These colour charts were complimented by new furniture designed by Gamper, and lighting fixtures by Anasstassiades. Gamper’s ‘Post Re’ collection saw the London-based designer repurpose consumer waste in order to profess the ‘beauty in scrap’.

Elsewhere in the gallery, a room was dedicated to the work of Bethan Laura Wood, including a new Bauhaus-inspired tea set for Rosenthal, among other new designs; India Madhavi’s Chez Nina space from last year was refreshed with new lighting projects by Vibeke Fonnesberg Schmidt, and tribute was paid to Osvaldo Borsani. An eclectic, yet epic, curatorial feat made possible by Ms Yashar’s unwavering eye.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Nilufar website

ADDRESS

Nilufar Gallery
Via della Spiga, 32
Milan
20121

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Step inside the sprawling east London studio space of Peter Pilotto and among the rails of colourful and intricately embroidered clothes, toiles and fabric swatches, you’ll find a spectrum of Martino Gamper’s colourful ‘Arnold Circus’ stools. These angular pieces formed the seating of the brand’s A/W 2017 show space; now, new versions of Gamper’s design, upholstered in the brand’s colourful fabrics, are available to buy at its pop-up design space in South Kensington. The brand’s three-storey takeover of a townhouse in Cromwell Place is part of Brompton Design District’s ‘Other Stories’ initiative for the London Design Festival.

Peter Pilotto’s eclectic installation features an assemblage of exclusive designs from not only Gamper, but a host of the brand’s artist and designer friends. It is an extensive iteration of the temporary space that the brand opened earlier this year, just a short hop away at Thurloe Place.

Resembling both a gallery setup, a vibrant home and a showroom, this curated two-room space featured furnishings seen in its A/W 2017 domestic interior-inspired runway. Held at the Palm Court at the Waldorf Hotel in Aldwych, the show featured a triptych of paintings by Peter McDonald, a Bethan Laura Wood-designed geometric print sofa and colourful tufty rugs by Max Lamb.

‘It’s all about showing people what surrounds us and our brand,’ explains co-founder Peter Pilotto. ‘We are so inspired when we’re in our friends homes or studios – that’s the kind of feeling we want to give to people,' the brand's other half, Christopher de Vos. To wit, the South Kensington installation includes a vast dressing room, populated with colour blocked mannequins, clothes hangers and fabric screens. Upstairs on the third floor, the brand’s colourful A/W 2017 collection can be found on display.

Furnishings and artworks by McDonald, Lamb, Wood and Schmid McDonagh populate the space, amongst ready-to-wear pieces. For A/W 2017, these include embroidered tweed outwear, bright leaf-detail velvet dresses and knitwear with Peruvian motif patches. The space also features delicate vases and jugs by glassblower Jochen Holz, who designed a range of organic curving earrings for the brand’s current collection. A selection of hand-knotted rugs, created by artisans in Ecuador, and graphic blankets spun from recycled yarns from its previous collections also feature.

Artist Francis Upritchard also made the ceramics that are dotted around the space. Peter Pilotto have collaborated with the artist for several years. In 2012, they worked on a series of colourful scarves for Studio Voltaire. For the brand’s S/S 2017 collection, Upritchard’s dinosaur and ‘Grumpy Moon’ illustrations also appeared as colourful patches on denim, caps and gingham shirts. ‘Peter and Christopher both have a fantastic sense of texture and colour,’ she says. ‘I’ve also used some of the patches on my small cap designs, and used their fabrics in some of the clothes for my figurative works.’

‘We were putting all our energy into show sets that the next day were gone,’ Pilotto explains of the decision to bring details of the brand's catwalk set ups into more concrete settings. ‘The space is demonstrating how its elements can be used and translated into different directions, which have more longevity.’

‘Our creative process is very much a conversation and exchange,’ says Martino Gamper, a frequent Wallpaper* collaborator, of his work with Peter Pilotto. ‘Since Peter and Chris are good friends of mine, we spend a lot of time together talking about each other's work. They’ve added their own sensibility to my “Arnold Circus” stool.’

The project also reflects the brand's fascination with the slower, more finite pace of the design world. It exists in a stark contrast to the swift seasonal pace of the fashion industry, where clothing collections are presented during a catwalk show that lasts a matter of minutes. ‘This is why working in London is so great,’ Pilotto says. ‘You have all these people that support fashion, and some of these designers are happy to be part of the world that we’ve created. We dine together and discuss a range of different things. We’re all interested in each other’s worlds.’

INFORMATION

Peter Pilotto’s pop-up is open until 24 September. For more information, visit the Peter Pilotto website and the Brompton Design District website

ADDRESS

3 Cromwell Place, SW7 2JN

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Photographer Brigitte Niedermair and designer Martino Gamper have known each other since childhood. The pair, both regular Wallpaper* collaborators, grew up in Merano, where northern Italy merges into Austria across the Alps. They took different professional routes, yet they each became artisans in creative fields, Niedermair says, mastering their crafts in unique ways.

Two years ago, strategist and creative problem solver Helen Nonini, who had known the pair for some time, decided it was time they collaborated. Nonini – whose experience in brand strategy has included work with Gucci, Gianvito Rossi and Audi – saw an affinity between Gamper, Niedermair and Italian textile brand Dedar, so she suggested a three-way collaboration. The owners of Dedar, Caterina and Raffaele Fabrizio, were looking for a way to celebrate the company’s 40th birthday; Nonini was tasked with finding a way to combine its textiles with the pair’s passion for art and design, to create something special.

‘The project had to represent our identity, which combines an intrinsic quality and ability to provoke with a playful and joyful attitude,’ says Raffaele. ‘The idea was to have a wall piece that mixed textile craft with a graphic expression,’ adds Caterina.

The siblings are now in charge of the company founded by their parents in 1976; Nicola and Elda Fabrizio started out working with the mills around Lake Como to create a diverse and eclectic collection of fabrics that has been growing ever since.

The brief gave Gamper and Niedermair the freedom to explore the possibilities that fine fabrics offer – all the owners asked was that they bring Dedar’s playfulness together with that passion for art, design and craftsmanship and channelling these qualities into a wall piece the company could produce and sell. After a long brainstorming session, Niedermair and Gamper travelled to Lake Garda, almost equidistant between Merano and Dedar’s base in Appiano Gentile, hoping to find inspiration in the area and its architecture, including Gabriele D’Annunzio’s legendary home, Il Vittoriale. Inspiration did indeed strike, just not in the way they expected.

‘One evening, we were driving to dinner through a remote area,’ recalls Niedermair. ‘The phone network wasn’t working and, as we were doing a search on Google Images. We noticed this pattern that appeared when images were slow to load.’ This effect, when a series of placeholder boxes appear as the actual pictures finish loading, is known in the digital community as Dominant Colour Lazy Loading. The Google algorithm arranges the boxes neatly in a grid, picking the dominant colour of each image to fill the boxes for a second or less.

Niedermair and Gamper saw the potential of these ephemeral patterns, and they started searching the names of artists and artworks to explore different effects. The Fabrizios had given them a list of artists they admired, such as Giotto, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Yves Klein and Henri Matisse, and Niedermair was quick to identify the colour blue as a common theme in these artists’ work.

Search terms used by Niedermair and Gamper included ‘Van Gogh notte stellata’ (The Starry Night), ‘Giotto cappella degli Scrovegni cielo stellato’ (the sky that appears in Giotto’s 14th-century fresco cycle in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua) and ‘Henri Matisse blue collage’. They also looked at Picasso’s Blue Period paintings and Klein’s eponymous shade of blue. For a fraction of a second, these searches would return an asymmetric grid of squares and rectangles in varying shades of blue, punctuated with green, orange or brown depending on the painting represented. And then the pattern would be gone as quickly as it appeared.

‘We felt we had found a synthesis of contemporary art, of our historical memory and of art’s codes, linking the present to the past,’ says Niedermair. Alongside Gamper, she searched for the combinations of colours that best represented each artist’s work, and started refining the searches to achieve the best pattern combinations on the results page. An important element of the project, Niedermair says, was the actual screenshot: a quick reaction was needed to press two buttons on the smartphone before the actual paintings loaded. ‘For me, this was research on what can be a photographic study,’ she says. ‘This work is at once very far from but also very close to photography – it’s an exploration of conceptual photography.’

Once photographed on a phone, each image was printed on Dedar’s ‘Tabularasa’ fabric, a thick cotton satin ideal for printed colours. The Fabrizios used an inkjet printer to achieve the right shades and straight lines. ‘[This fabric] was the perfect support on which to achieve the rigour of a screen,’ says Gamper.

A bonus, he notes, is that the high density of the material renders the panels soundproof, making them ideal for large-scale interiors projects. As composition is key to the project, Niedermair and Gamper created a wood and brass frame for the panels, which allows them to be slotted into each other, in order to create infinite modular arrangements. (The panels come numbered and signed.) The Giotto piece was also adapted into an item of furniture, with two wooden three-dimensional constructions applied to the brown boxes. Each work can be mounted on a rotating support, which offers viewers the effect of a phone screen changing orientation. Niedermair says this element captures the essence of the project, as it references its technological origins.

When asked what was the most important moment of the two-year project, Niedermair and Gamper agree that driving up and down that narrow road at Lake Garda was a pretty special and even absurd experience. ‘Usually, you drive around so that your phone will work,’ says Gamper. ‘We were driving around so that our phones wouldn’t work – it was almost a paradox.’

The process has been a team effort, with Nonini identifying the collaboration, Gamper and Niedermair coming up with the concept and Dedar applying its expertise to the production under the Fabrizios’ guidance. Gamper and Niedermair were also asked to shoot photographs to promote the project and, for Wallpaper*, they took the pictures that appear on these pages. The limited-edition cover they created for this issue nods to this five-way partnership by representing Matisse’s Dance, a 1909 painting that depicts five people holding hands and dancing in a circle.

The pair’s classic but radical approach to art enchanted the Fabrizios. ‘We like that Martino is a craftsman who can combine artisanal tradition with conceptual thinking, and Brigitte’s unique point of view, her unconventional approach to femininity,’ says Raffaele. The two creatives met each other halfway, in a place that is neither photography nor design, but a little of both. ‘Formally, this work is not myself nor Brigitte,’ says Gamper. Niedermair agrees, adding: ‘Yet it might be us at our best.’

As originally featured in the April 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*217)

INFORMATION

‘Screenshot’, a show of the artworks, is at Wallpaper's exhibition space, One Poultry, between 10 – 18 March, 9am – 5pm. For more information, visit Brigitte Niedermair’s website, Martino Gamper’s website, and the Dedar website

ADDRESS

One Poultry
London EC2R 8EJ

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Bigger, bolder and more beautiful – it can only be our annual Global Interiors issue. From Canada to Brazil, China to Belgium, we’ve scoured the globe to bring together the finest furnishings from the world’s design hotspots.

Master artists and the internet inspire Martino Gamper and Brigitte Niedermair’s panel show for Dedar, as well as their limited edition cover for the April 2017 issue (available to subscribers). Elsewhere, paper turns over a new leaf at a Tokyo printworks, and our Picky Nicky sees the light with John Pawson in his latest column.

Meet some of the contributors to our April 2017 issue

We get exclusive insights from the man behind the Louvre Abu Dhabi, while gallerists John and Gretch Bergguren open up about their new San Francisco adventure. Thaddaeus Ropac advances to Mayfair with the launch of his London gallery, and photographer Mat Collishaw mines the 19th century for a new portrait series. French artist Xavier Veilhan flips the perfect crouton omelette in the latest of our Artist’s Palate series.

As ever, the issue brimming with architectural treats. Over in West Vancouver, Arthur Erickson’s Eppich House is a mindbending modernist treasure. Meanwhile in Antwerp, artists Luc Tuymans and Carla Arocha invite us for a tour of their Glenn Sestig-designed penthouse; and architect Eduardo Brito proves he’s ahead of the curve with a brave Brasilia bolthole.

Then, we’re camping it up at Villa Kampffmeyer – not to mention giving pearls a while. It’s all about model behaviour with Richard Meier in our main fashion story, and Ermengildo Zegna weighs in with a travel-friendly collection.

Finally, our Germany supplement explores the latest in the country’s daring design vision, from the best of Cologne Furniture Fair, to the latest Bahn stormers and Berlin’s specs appeal. Wunderbar!

INFORMATION

The April 2017 issue of Wallpaper* is out now. Subscribe here

Upon entering the peculiar playpen of design currently on view at Chamber in New York, the urge to learn the exhibition's theme is inevitable. With 'Just What Is It' – the show's tongue-in-cheek title – the answer is a little more complex; the jumble is an artwork of its own, a conceptual collage conceived by Switzerland-based curator Matylda Krzykowski.

Krzykowski follows in the footsteps of Studio Job and Andrew Zuckerman for the third iteration of the exhibition series at the boutique/gallery. Taking her inspiration directly from Richard Hamilton’s collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, Krzykowski reinterprets the British artist’s concept in a 3D compilation of specially comissioned and existing works.

'Ancient Drawing of a Very Mysterious Forceniert Nochmals' by Rafal Dominik

‘Richard Hamilton thrived on ambivalence, playfulness and observation, and without comparison, I thrive on the same,’ says Krzykowski. Contrasting forms, like Studio Silo’s surreal Chicken sculpture and Studio Swine’s boulder-shaped ‘Metallic Geology’ cupboard, she appraises the side of design void of consumerism. The curator explains: 'Once something is successful, the industry mass-produces it to a level that nothing is left from the initial idea.'

The fringes of the 'photomontage' play between silhouettes in steel squiggles by Polish sculptor Rafal-Dominik, and organic curved shelves by Robert Stadler. These stand in opposition to the abstract geometry of a trio of specially comissioned pieces – Florian Ziller’s dynamic foldable mirror, Martino Gamper’s rubbish bins and Deborah Bowmann industrial room dividers, all in metallic or reflective finishes.

Elsewhere Jochen Holz's blown glass neons and Os and Oos' graphic lighting straddle the realms of art and functional design. Mirka Laura's Still Life series tackles Krzykowski's tumult, questioning the very notion of what a product is.

Still life by Mirka Laura

Krzykowski steers clear of the one-note palette of mass-produced domestic design too – blue accents guide visitors around the space. Sprawled across the central marble plinth is Louie Rigano and Gil Muller’s robust weaved rug, Jiří Pelcl's whimsical metal teddies and Tina Roeder’s shelving, all in similar electric hues.

‘Once the pieces in the gallery find an owner, the mode of camaraderie is broken, and the individual relationship to these possessions begins,’ she adds. Krzykowski intends to add more layers to her collage – the next three chapters of her installation are set to unfold between now and spring next year.

INFORMATION

’Just What Is It’ is on view until May 2017. For more information, visit the Chamber NYC website

ADDRESS

Chamber
515 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

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Opened in January on South Kensington’s Launceston Place, See••Ds is one of the most interesting design projects to have emerged in London in the past months. Owner Natalie Azzi has worked with Milanese studio Actant Visuelle to create a design that combines conceptual visual research with a retail dimension.

The latest effort of the gallerist features a collection of pottery pieces by Martino Gamper and 'friends’. Titled 'No Ordinary Love', the selling exhibition features an array of ceramic shapes created by the Italian designer as well as associates such as Bethan Laura Wood, Max Lamb, Tiago Almeida, Gemma Holt and Silo Studio, among others. The group of designers, who had been friends for a long time but had never collaborated on a project, took to an English workshop to create objects in clay, working as a collective and presenting work united by a sun-shaped logo.

The exhibition questions the concept of authorship and its importance in the design panorama. The curation (by Gamper in collaboration with the duo behind Actant Visuelle) asks several questions relating to the pieces’ signatures, wondering whether authorship is in fact more important than an object’s aesthetic or function.

To create a conversation around this concept, the three curators devised a series of rules for the collection, the first of which was unveiled on the exhibition’s opening. Each piece has been signed by the collective, and sold at a starting price. A buyer can accept this price and the somewhat anonymous origin of a piece, or request to know the author but pay double the starting figure.

The second part of the exhibition features further new projects by the designers, using a variety of media and materials, and expressing each creator’s aesthetic. These include a series of solid, hand-bent aluminium chairs and furniture by Max Lamb, neon light shapes by Jochen Holz, an etched glass cocktail set by Bethan Laura Wood and steel furniture by Faudet Harrison.

This double project strengthens the gallery’s engagement with design on a deeper level, creating a broader movement while at the same time presenting new work by an exciting roster of designers. 

INFORMATION

'No Ordinary Love – Martino Gamper with Friends' is on view until 20 January. For more information, visit the See••Ds website 

ADDRESS

3 Launceston Place
London W8 5RL

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The 'Brompton Cocktail' has a dark and somewhat disturbing history: a London legend, the concoction was administered as palliative care to the local hospital since the 1920s, and included a mix of morphine and cocaine that acted as a painkiller. 

The blend inspired curator Jane Withers, who used it as a focus for the Brompton Design District’s latest project. The 'Brompton Cocktail', explains Withers, is about transformation, which is also the theme for the district’s 10th anniversary: ‘From diverse ingredients into a potent formula, from base materials into thoughtful ideas and objects, from one state of mind to another, from one world to the next.’ The project celebrates the area’s transformation, and its diverse creative offering, ranging from independent design destinations to the large furniture showrooms existing in close connection. 

Withers invited a group of London designers to create modern-day interpretations of the lethal cocktail (which was administered until the 1970s, and served as inspiration for the Italian Futurists, and more), and the resulting menu, she notes, reflects the diversity of the district’s collaborators. The fantastic range on offer is an inspiring look at creative mixology: from Tomàs Alonso’s ‘Rusty Nail Sbagliato’, to Max Lamb’s Cornwall-inspired 'White River', Martino Gamper's 'Gingerini', a conceptual beer experiment by Peter Marigold, and de Allegri and Fogale’s 'Flora Gin', among others.

Presented through an installation by inventive gastronomic studio Arabeschi di Latte (who themselves contributed a cocktail, the 'Pretty Hanky Panky'), and served in specially developed glassware by Bitossi, the project is accompanied by a recipe book, should anyone wish to recreate the creative cocktails at home. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Brompton Design District's website

'Last year it was all about the space, but this week it is much more about pieces,' says the Milanese design doyen Nina Yashar.

The inimitable art dealer opened her sprawling 1,500 sq m design 'warehouse', Nilufar Depot, during last year's Salone del Mobile and is again likely to steal the show with a stunning hybrid of antique, vintage and contemporary works which Yashar meticulously arranges in 'cinematic scenes'. Think retro-futuristic 'Chaise Maurice' armchairs by the Beirut-based david/nicolas design studio paired with the perfectly proportioned, limited edition brass and marble 'Blossom' floor lamp by Analogia Project, atop a vintage rug.

The words 'treasure trove' are often bandied about but the Depot offers a true master class in design. Much on show this week has been specially commissioned, from a trio of Massimiliano Locatelli's fluid 'Urmia' tables and abstract benches by Martino Gamper, to Italian architect Roberto Baciocchi's extraordinary 'Mirror Room', featuring Milanese artist Roberto Giulio Rida's extravagant indigo blue 'Mediterraneo' cabinets. It's not all Italian: we also spotted ethereal pendant lights by American designer Lindsey Adelman, Belgian designer Maarten De Ceulaer's elegant pile of leather briefcases, and the British creative Laura Bethan Wood's 'Ring' chandelier.

The highlight, however, is the intriguing collection of custom furniture and lighting by the young up-and-coming Italian designer Federico Peri, whose integrated 'Biblioteca Itinerante' seat with built-in shelves introduces a fresh take on industrial form. 

'I am obsessed by his idea of building a house with all the same design pieces like Jean Prouvé. The unity of it is very beautiful,' says Yashar.

The gallerist admits she is equally obsessed with Loctatelli's new 3D printed table, created using a machine designed by a NASA engineer to build houses on the moon. 

'This is what Salone should be. Not things you've already seen or that remind you of something from last year. It is about surprising people,' she says. Mission accomplished.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Nilufar’s website

ADDRESS

Nilufar Depot
Viale V. Lancetti 34
20158 Milan

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After more than a decade spent as spectators at Salone Del Mobile, the Oregon-based Nike design team has finally decided to make its own contribution to Milan Design Week.

For its spectacular debut project – 'The Nature Of Motion' – Nike's vice president of global design, John Hoke, invited ten progressive, contemporary designers including Sebastian Wrong, Martino Gamper and Max Lamb to explore natural motion through various mediums. Some works are conceptual, foreshadowing future technologies, while others are more practical. In many cases, materials unique to Nike, such as Flyknit, have been applied. The project’s intention is to illustrate the potential of the human body through a synergy of form, function and motion. Nike’s obsession with 'natural motion' persists and with each innovation, the gap between product and body lessens.

The unique collaborations – which variously reference, heat, energy, light, lightness, movement, rest, rhythm and percussion – are housed in a vast industrial space (100m down the road from the Fondazione Prada, south of Central Milan) transformed into a sensual, experiential Nike journey. From huge video installations and touchy/feely synthetic horticulture, to kinetic sculpture, drum kits and outlandish shoe prototypes, each collaborative exhibit is separated by sweeping white walls, constructed by hand from thousands of Nike shoe box bricks.

Wallpaper* sat down with John Hoke to discuss the genesis of the project, handpicking designers and the company's obsession with form and function.

W*: The shoe box walls are a bonafide sculptural wonder. How many Nike shoe boxes were used exactly – and how did they get here? 
JH: I think there are between 20,000 and 25,000 boxes. Let’s just say it’s a lot.

You trained as architect and sit on the board at Herman Miller, so Salone del Mobile has long been on your radar, but why is it important for Nike to be at Salone in among all the furniture and kitchens? 
The Nike team has come to Salone for many years as observers and we felt, because of the nature of the focus on design and creative excellence, and unique innovations, it was time that we presented something ourselves. For us, 'The Nature of Motion' is a discourse, a point of view – a dialogue with the city of Milan and its assembled, creative minds. It’s our position. The exhibit is focussed on three things: collaboration, sports innovation and the notion of imagination. To begin to get a glimpse into the not too distance future, showing where we think the world of design is going.

The exhibition has been two years in the planning, right? 
Yes, almost two years. But really, this is a journey we’ve been on for 40 years and it’s a journey that is never complete. It’s a pursuit of thinking about how we study the body, how we create products – footwear, clothing etc. Our mission is to create a symbiotic, one-on-one relationship that is in perfect harmony with the body in motion. Where the athlete is free from distraction. It’s dynamic design; we operate on the principle that if we can design a cohesive system that works together, we can effectively reduce or eliminate all meaningful distractions and allow the athlete’s mind and body to focus solely on performance.

Some of the conceptual pieces in the exhibition are pretty wild. As outlandish as they are, do you see some elements or design details of those concepts becoming integrated into Nike production models in the future?
The concepts take us to the edge of what’s possible. It’s all about letting your dream of design overtake your logic of design. What I see are glimpses in those exhibits, details and ideas that will begin to point us in certain directions in the future. Many of them deal with the sensation of sending signals up through the body via the soles of the feet and that is something that is very fundamental to us at Nike. Yes, some of the shoes are absurd – but if you are honest as a designer, dreaming unencumbered by logic is the right way to be. 

How did you arrive at the collection of collaborative talent for the exhibition?
They are all people with whom we believed we could engage and exchange, people who could challenge us and vice-versa. They are helping take us someplace new, helping us with our dialogue.

What brief did you give the collaborators exactly?
The brief was pretty simple; help explore and abstract, and question and challenge the notion of mobility, motion and movement. Each piece is a unique exploration, a piece of poetry expressed either by form and surface, scale, equilibrium, the nature of gravity or rhythm, of how the body reacts to heat and cool – all of which happen to be narratives synonymous with the narratives of athletes, by the way. Each one has taken us into a different vein of thinking.

Away from nature, what else has influenced the Nike design team recently?
Nature and the body is always a foundational thought for us but we will study anything that moves… anything that has intentional motion that involves power and grace. Recently, we went to Kyoto to study the intention of craft and how craft works with nature. We’ve also visited lots of different engineers, artists, designers. We are wide open – we have spent time with zoo keepers, to look at animal movement, with couturiers, tailors, automotive designers. Even Google.

You talk a lot about 'performance and beauty'...
At Nike we are problem solvers – function. And we are taste-makers – beauty. And we believe that the unique juxtaposition and harmonising of those two ideas is Nike’s distinct advantage. We don’t sacrifice either beauty or function. For us, the goal is goose bumps, a visceral reaction to something beautiful, because the best design should captivate at first glance We want to make iconic, hypnotic products so that people will be inspired by the form and surface, but also thrilled by the intention and function. The perfect balance of art and science. When we do it really well, it’s hard to know where one starts and the other stops.

INFORMATION

'The Nature of Motion' is on view until 17 April. For more information, visit Nike's website

ADDRESS

Via Orobia 15
20139, Milan

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Loewe: Spanish leather goods house Loewe presented a limited edition collection of leather vessels inspired by Austrian potter Lucie Rie and produced by Spanish artisan José Luis Bazán

Loewe: Creative director Jonathan Anderson designed three sets of 50 different leather bowls, sculpting each one with his hands for a collection of one-of-a-kind creations 

Marni: Marni's successful fruit bazaar at last year's Milan fashion week morphed into a fruit market at the brand's Milan Headquarters during the Salone del Mobile

Marni: Baskets brimming with exotic fruit from Colombia were all put on display with woven PVC, wire furniture and tabletop designs from a group of female Colombian artisans

Brioni: The master tailors and Wallpaper* joined forces once again this Salone. Paying tribute to the Viennese elegance that inspired Creative Director Brendan Mullane's latest collection, the fashion brand teamed up with Vienna-based glassmakers Lobmeyr to create a specially oversized version of its legendary Oswald Haerdtl-designed Candy Dish, which in turn takes centre stage for a city of glass for Brioni’s mini heroes, all immaculately dressed in miniature replicas from the collection

COS: Visitors to Spazio Erbe in Brera wandered through an enormous all-white, cave-like structure created expressly for the COS clothing brand

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COS: Designed by New York-based studio Snarkitecture, the space was showered in translucent white textile strips that looked like icicles dripping from the roof of a grotto

Clarks: In honour of the 65th anniversary of its Desert Boot, British shoe brand Clarks partnered with the Halo Trust to present new versions of the boot created by 14 different UK-based artists and designers including Marc Quinn, Lee Broom and Faye Toogoode. The painting featured is entitled 'Urban Nomad' 

Giorgio Armani: In addition to a new Armani Casa collection that featured the limited edition 'Justin' desk in sea-green leather and red lacquer chairs among other items, Giorgio Armani also transformed his Armani Teatro space into an interior design studio

Alexander McQueen: Studio Wieki Somers and Kvadrat took up residence at McQueen's Via Verri home through a unique, bespoke installation. Inspired by the Spring/Summer 2015 collection, 'Blossom Rain' featured three geisha warriors holding a series of lamps against a blossom haze backdrop of laser cut textile from Kvadrat

Giorgio Armani: A retrospective of the company's top design projects over the last decade were on display in honour of the designer's 40th anniversary that is coming to a culmination next month with the debut of his new museum Armani/Silos

Giorgio Armani: Mr Armani also opened a brand new flagship store at Via Montenapoleone 2, which is dominated by sweeping curves. 

Fendi: The Roman brand has been dangling its Bag Bug fur charms from its handbags for a few seasons now, but it took the Campana Brothers to throw 100 of the playful furry creatures all together on a single seat. Entitled 'The Armchair of a Thousand Eyes,' the chair is a riot of colour, pattern and mixed tufts of kidassia, mongolia, shearling and rabbit furs

Tory Burch: Celebrating the launch of their new Lettuce Ware in collaboration with legendary Palm Beach ceramicist Dodie Thayer, the American lifestyle brand and Wallpaper* commissioned Bethan Laura Wood to create a unique installation. Inspired by retro party nibbles, Wood created a equally bright and cheerful installation of super-sized canapés. Following their Milan debut, they will next tour around Tory Burch stores in London, Munich and New York

Fendi: The house also showed a new Casa collection with the 'Blixen' lounge chair by Toan Nguyen taking our fancy

Antonio Marras: The Italian's long-running collaboration with boutique creative design agency, Segno Italiano, yields increasingly satisfying results. This year, the team created a giant bird cage featuring a series of hand-made wooden nests swinging from the ceiling and trailing with Marras' own textiles, while 50 tiny birds happily chirped and fluttered about. The same artisan who made the nests was also commissioned to weave river cane rods with strips of Marras' fabric to create a series of vases and baskets

Missoni: Apart from its latest home collection featuring graphic black and white upholstered furniture, Missoni also created a lounging experience for weary Salone visitors in its Via Solferino Showroom

Missoni: Entitled 'Missoni Mirroring,' the setup included suspended mirrors, peep-holes featuring endless reflections of ceramic vases. Walls were covered with mirrors and tapestries, and floors were strewn with carpets and poufs for guests to lounge on

BassamFellows: As part of its five-designer series to recreate the classic shoes worn by Marcello Mastroianni in the 1960s, traditional Italian footwear designer Sutor Mantellassi collaborated with Connecticut-based furniture designers Scott Fellows and Craig Bassam. BassamFellows, already intimately fond of finely crafted materials, choose strips of eel skin on a sleek, slip on loafer, and sturdy leather for their chelsea boot

Bottega Veneta: The house secured a superb location for its first free-standing home collection boutique. Located discreetly on Milan's Via Borgospesso, the store unfolds like a series of grand rooms in a renaissance palazzo with magnificent wall frescoes and double-height wooden ceilings

Bottega Veneta: This was the first time the brand properly showed off its full home offering in a single dedicated space

Versace: The latest Versace home collection comes revved up with the usual sparkle, flash and oversized shapes that drives its signature excess. The new 'Coupe des Dieux' chair, however, is cut in slim lines and covered entirely in leather (either dark grey, white, red or turquoise) and is an antidote to the usual extravagance

Bulgari: To celebrate its latest Serpenti jewellery collection, Bulgari worked with Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid to create a snake-inspired installation in the garden of the Bulgari Hotel

Bulgari: Hadid's enormous white metal structure slithered across the grass like a tunnel featuring an open mosaic of reptilian scales

Valextra: The Italian luxury handbag label teamed up with furniture designer Martino Gamper for the design of several new handbags featuring his signature intarsia work as well as a special installation at the Via Manzoni store

Valextra: Gamper lined the shop in magnetic sheets. He covered the walls with rich Kvadrat wool and then affixed handbags directly to the walls using magnets. This created a floating sea of accessories

Emilio Pucci: The Italian house partnered with industrial designer Philippe Starck on the design of a new chair produced by Kartell and presented in Pucci's new Via Montenapoleone boutique

Emilio Pucci: Entitled 'Madame,' the new chair features Kartell's signature plastic clear legs, while Pucci's 'Cities of the World' scarf prints (offered in four city graphics, including New York, Paris, Shanghai and Rome) provided a printed outer wrap to the solid silk seats

Ermenegildo Zegna: The house tapped Milan-based Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola to create a series of seating elements from recycled wine barrel wood

Ermenegildo Zegna: Entitled 'Baco,' Urquiola's concept included two forms: a tunnel shaped stool and a three-petal seat, both of which were displayed in the brand's boutique. The project was conceived by San Patrignano Design Label who has worked with over 45 designers to create modern pieces from antique casks

Adidas: In conjunction with their Body Building Design collection, which graces the cover of this month's issue (W* 194), Milan-based duo Alberto Biagetti and Laura Baldessari have also designed a pair of shoes produced by Adidas. Featuring muscle-men graphics, the shoe was presented at INNER, a boutique in Via Pasquale Paoli 4, Milan

Paula Cademartori: Atelier Biagetti has had a busy Salone. In addition to their Body Building Design exhibit and the Adidas shoe, they also created a totem shaped book shelf for Paula Cademartori, the Brazilian-born Milan based accessories designer who launched her new 'Lotus' sandal at Corso Como 10

Marcelo Burlon: Fashion designer Marcelo Burlon has quickly made strides with his eponymous sportswear label. Now the young entrepreneur is growing his brand with a collection of three graphic carpets, all hand-knot in Nepal that he designed for Italian rug company Illulian

Lawrence Steele: Marble manufacturer, Marsotto, partners with different industrial designers every year, but they've never teamed up with a fashion designer until now. The marriage with Aspesi designer, Lawrence Steel, was a happy one, thanks to Steele's three collections of tables and consoles featuring sharp lines and graphic black and white intarsia patterns

Tod's: What would the ideal bag for a male architect look like? This was the task set forth by Japanese design studio, Nendo, in its second collaboration with leather goods company Tod's. Crafted from super soft calfskin, the resulting bag features multiple pockets both inside and outside for documents and pens, while its form can morph from a carry-all tote, and a fold-over man-bag, to a strapless clutch with just a few quick snaps

Roberto Cavalli: More continues to be more in the home world of Roberto Cavalli, where the designer offers all manner of exotic pattern for every interior surface. This season's collection came brimming with lush florals and his beloved leopard print crawling on plates as well as floral intarsia rugs and upholstered dining room chairs

La Rinascente: Milan's most famous department store collaborated for the second year in a row with the Serpentine Galleries for a special commission on eight store front windows. Entitled 'Pasted' and curated by Libby Sellers, the window display featured a preview exhibition of a soon-to-be-launched collection of Serpentine Gallery wallpapers. These wallpapers were designed by various artists and architects. They also featured three specially commissioned and filmed dances choreographed by Malgorzata Dzierzon that screened against site-specific installations by emerging set designers and paper sculptors including Lydia Shirreff, Anna Lomax and Carrie Louise

Bertoni 1949: Classic Italian trunk maker Bertoni 1949 partnered for the second Salone in a row with Hangar Design Group on a 'Game Trunk'.  A traditional oak casket, covered in Bertoni’s leather parchment and alligator trim, is set on elegant steel legs and features drawers stocked with a chess set, a set of poker playing cards, a mahjong game and dominoes, all of which can be played on the pull-out table

Nina Yashar is without question Milan's top design dealer and her Nilufar Gallery in Via della Spiga has pulsed as the epicentre of achingly expensive mid-century gems and the hottest contemporary designs for the last 15 years.

But what goes on behind the elegant windows in the small, well-curated rooms of her famous gallery is only a tiny sliver of Yashar's full design stash. The real booty has been stockpiled over the last 30 years in a 1,500 sq m warehouse north of the Garibaldi train station. Up until now, the ex-industrial space was closed to the public and used just for Yashar's own sourcing purposes. But now she is flinging open the doors for the first time to Nilufar Depot: a three-storey treasure trove featuring 3,000 pieces of historic and contemporary design, conceived by many of the young designers that Yashar has championed over the years.

Designed by Milan-based architect Massimiliano Locatelli (whose furniture she has frequently shown in her Via della Spiga gallery), the interior configuration was inspired by Milan's famous Teatro alla Scala. A central cement floored atrium is surrounded by three storeys of black metal balconies in which small furniture scenes are illuminated by neon lights designed by Marco Rizzuto.

The space is imposing, dramatic and yet practical. The configuration permits an easy scan-viewing of the massive stock from below, while curtains made from a techno-plastic material swathe each stall, just like the booths at the famous ballet theatre. 'I don't like décor as an end in itself,' says Yashar. 'Function is what interests me.' The location, which features a stage with a 6m-tall brass curtain designed by artist Leonor Antunes, has been conceived to host exhibitions, art and artists going forward.

The launch event, a dinner which took place last night at the beginning of Salone del Mobile, featured table scenes designed by Martino Gamper, another Nilufar gallery protégé. Each table was adorned with enormous 19th-century napkins, avant-garde glasses and menus signed by the designer.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Nilufar website

ADDRESS

Nilufar Depot
Via Lancetti 34
20158 Milan

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In a first for the Milanese fashion brand, Prada has enlisted an outside collaborator to mastermind its store window concept, also marking the inaugural fashion collaboration for Italian designer Martino Gamper. The joint debut, unveiled in Milan, will be rolled out to Prada's 300-plus family of stores worldwide.

Entitled 'Corners', the windows are designed as a celebration of the humble corner, while Gamper's work is part sculptural installation, part practical solution that draws viewers into the space forming a magnetic display for the collection and a dramatic sight for passers-by.

Since developing an in-depth study of corners during his time at the Royal College of Art, and dedicating his dissertation to the fruits of his research, many of Gamper's furniture pieces have been developed with the corner in mind. His wide-reaching portfolio includes the aptly titled 'Corner Shelf', 'Corner Speaker', 'Corner Lights', 'Corner Bench', plus several other items devoted to filling an angular space.

The windows' design riff on the boxy shapes and geometric detailing of Prada's S/S 2015 offering. And given the somewhat deconstructed nature of the collection, Gamper feels like a natural choice for the brand this season, with his raw finishes a beautiful complement to the clothes.

'The main idea was to play with perspective and geometry,' explains Gamper, whose brief included working with wood and creating a nature-inspired concept with a simplicity that would enhance the clothes, while displaying the complexity of the wood.

He selected oak, maple and ebony and combined them with marquetry techniques to convey the perception of the corner. The result is a flexible concept that can adapt to the full range of the brand's global displays, and that combines Prada's fashion sensitivity with Gamper's intellectual design language.

The best ideas can be summed up pretty easily. And the idea behind Design is a State of Mind, a new show curated by Martino Gamper at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery is 'interesting things collected by interesting people on interesting shelves'.

'I didn't want to do an historical show,' says Martino, walking me around the exhibition. 'And I didn't want a "what design is now" kind of show. But I did want to use design to display design.'

Simple enough. And given that the Serpentine gave Gamper an open brief and three months to get the show ready, you can see why he resisted unnecessary complication. Except it isn't really simple of course. To work well, and the show works very well indeed, Gamper had to get all the elements, all these stories, working together.

He started with the shelves. Now that Gamper is a central and influential figure in the British design scene, it is easy to forget that he is actually Italian. But an immersion in Italian design, especially in the work of designers like Gio Ponti, who continued to work with craftsmen while their peers embraced industrialisation, is clear in his selection. Many of the shelves are rare one-offs, secured from private lenders with a lot of help from Milan's Nilufar Gallery (given the time restrictions, this made more sense than trying to deal with institutions, Gamper says).

There are shelves from Franco Albini, Ettore Sottsass, Ponti, Andrea Branzi, BBPR, where the R stands for Ernesto Rogers (cousin of Richard), Michele De Lucchi and Vico Magistretti, as well as Charlotte Perriand, Alvar Aalto for Artek, Vitsoe, Ercol, a number of Gamper's own shelves and a bit of Ikea thrown in. 

The collections come from friends, friends of friends, tutors and students who Gamper knew were inveterate hoarders of inspirational objects. Most of them are also designer makers. In the simplest terms, Gamper wants to show how the collections, the materials and the mechanics influence that making.

Some of these collections suggest a collector and a maker immediately; a stash of rocks, some black, some white, smoothed and shaped by time and nature, has been borrowed from Michael Anastassiades, as you might have guessed. So too the pop-bright plastic fantastic of Bethan Laura Wood's haul.

Some collections are tightly focused, personal/professional obsessions; Maki Suzuki's bricks; Jurgen Bay's bestiary; Max Lamb and Gemma Holt's collection of Bernard Leach (and acolytes pottery); the heavy-duty hoes and other gardening equipment collected by the artist Richard Wentworth; and the wooden spoons collected by the photographer Jason Evans (disappointingly Konstantin Gric couldn't locate his box full of prized coat hangers in time for the show).

Some of the displays are more eclectic, such as Ron Arad's knuckle duster to carved cat collection for instance. Perhaps the most remarkable collection though has a space all to itself: Enzo Mari's found object paper weights.

Design is a State of Mind is only the second dedicated design show at the Serpentine, following on from Konstantin Grcic's Design Real, which opened in 2009. And the two shows are an instructive contrast; Grcic's qualified techno-optimism set against Gamper's idea of design as bricolage, a messy assembly of what was and what is, of objects that appeal for reasons we don't entirely understand. Gamper is against taste systems but for taste, in the fullest sense. After all, a shelf, however beautiful, is only half a story, if that. It is the bits and bobs, the magpie hauls, that make sense of it. 

ADDRESS

Serpentine Sackler Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London W2 3XA

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