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As we all know, Milan Design Week is the quintessential design event, big enough to put a highlight in our yearly design calendar, a spring in our step and a hole in our wallet. It brings hordes of designers, industry players and the design curious to the city of Milan every year, to find inspiration and scout the latest trends and technologies.

It’s a special kind of event where big design as well as fashion names go over-the-top with all-out installations scattered around the design capital. But a fair that is undoubtedly based on furniture and objects, has evolved into a fair about experience, and the brands that manage to capture enough attention and create an experience worth remembering are the ones that have made their job truly worthwhile.

Well, Milan Design Week is now over and done with. We’ve all digested the awe-inspiring spaces, appreciated the contrast of a 16th-century castle with a day-old 3D-printed installation, and taken in the endless variety of colors, textures and forms. As you probably know, we sent nonstop Instagram stories, sharing hundreds of live photos which you can still check out in our highlights! But first, here’s part one of our coverage from the fair, so scroll down for some of the best.

Alcova Sassetti

Alcova is an itinerant platform for independent design developed by Space Caviar and Studio Vedet, which activates forgotten locations of historical significance, temporarily recasting them as extraordinary design show venues. At this year’s location on via Sassetti, we fell in love with the multicolor pieces by Bloc Studios, Federica Elmo, Odd Matter, 4Spaces, Henzel Studio, Studio Minale-Maeda, Alissa Volkchova and others.

Advantage Austria - Pleasure & Treasure

Advantage Austria, the entity that promotes Austrian businesses abroad, transformed the architecturally stunning Sala Reale — once the waiting room of the Royal House of Savoy at Milan’s Central Station— into a design pool, inviting visitors to wade through a sea of styrofoam in order to find their way to the exhibit.

Lara Bohinc x kasthall

Internationally acclaimed British designer Lara Bohinc created the new Kasthall rug, wall hanging and accessories collection entitled “From the Sun to the Moon,” inspired by Japanese rock gardens. Mixing different wool grades and yarn types, the combination of natural materials and patterns form a striking expression of style, function and heritage.

Planetario by Cristina Celestino

One of many projects to come from Cristina Celestino at this year’s Milan Design Week, “Planetario” is an immersion into the designer-architect’s fantastical, plushly carpeted world. Taking hold of the wildly popular Brera Design Apartment, Celestino created a curatorial concept that renders the carpet its main character, with upholstery climbing up from the floor to cover furnishings and even make its way up to the ceiling. The retro-futuristic apartment embraces vintage icons of the past with a decidedly contemporary touch, and introduces new collections in the form of hand-drawn printed carpets for Besana Carpetlab and a series of lamps for Esperia.

cc-tapis

Studio Milo transformed cc-tapis’s design week space into a space-age fantasy: a retro- futuristic laboratory where nothing is quite as it seems. The rug company presented an all-new collection of hand-knotted rugs by six different designers, including Martino Gamper, Patricia Urquiola, David/Nicolas, Germans Ermičs, Maarten De Ceulaer, Studiopepe, and the all- new cc-tapis-designed Rug Invaders collection. The show highlighted cc-tapis’s endless capacity to research and experiment with different techniques and finishes.

Conifera by cos

For clothing brand COS’s eighth year at Milan Design Week, the brand partnered with architect Arthur Mamou-Mani and his team to create “Conifera,” an installation made from 3D-printed bioplastic bricks. The ethereal experience bridged architecture and nature, flowing through the courtyard and into the gardens of the 16th century Palazzo Isimbardi, and looking to the future of design, tech and material innovation.

Dai Nippon Printing

Japan-based printing company DNP (Dai Nippon Printing) teamed up with interior design firm AtMa and architecture firm Noiz to bring to life one of the abandoned warehouses alongside Milan’s Central Station as part of the Ventura Centrale design district. The collaboration presented the concept "Patterns as Time," leveraging technology-supported design and printing combined with artistic sensibilities. The result was an unforgettable, divided space enlivened with the patterns and colors that revitalize and reinterpret honored Japanese traditions.

Elle Decor at Work

The tech revolution of the last few decades has not only introduced new work tools, interfaces and modes of sharing, but has also transformed work from a repetitive and predictable motion into an experiential process, incorporating productive hours, moments for well-being, leisure time and retail breaks, thus calling for a much-needed transformation in the design of our dedicated workspaces. This year, Elle Decor Italia tackled the topic of workspace evolution, transforming the rooms inside Milan’s lofty Palazzo Bovara in order to re-examine the complexity and variety of changes currently taking place in the office world.