Milan Design Week Opens With Record Number of Independent Studios
By Sana Kovač
By ten on the first morning the queue outside the Tortona warehouses was three deep, and more than half of it was waiting for studios that did not exist five years ago.
Shows like this one tend to be remembered for a single room, and the argument about whether the rest earned it starts on the second weekend.
Giulia Ferrante, the fair's programme director, has been close to it from the start.
Background
Of the 412 exhibitors this year, 214 have fewer than ten people on staff. In 2019 that figure was 96.
Budget was fixed before the brief was finished, which is the wrong order and, everyone involved agrees, the usual one.
The shift has changed what the week sounds like as much as what it shows.
The small studios are not the fringe programme any more. They are the reason people come early.
Ferrante
The method
The fair dropped its minimum stand size and introduced a shared-floor rate, which put eleven studios into a single hall that used to hold two.
The measure will be whether anything changes afterwards, in the collection or the programme, rather than in the press release.
The first week brought the kind of attention nobody plans for, and the second brought the criticism that actually changed something.
They are careful about what they claim. Two of the decisions that look deliberate now were, by their own account, the only option left by the time anyone noticed.
Where it goes
The fair runs until Sunday. The shared hall is already fully booked for next year.
