The Salone del Mobile in Milan has been running since 1961 and has become a Mecca for anybody interested in design, it is the largest furniture design show in the world and this year had 292,370 trade operators in attendance. As a subsidiary of this there is Salone Satellite, this is where young designers from all over the world get to show their work to industry professionals in the aim to get their designs spotted and taken into production. There were 750 designers exhibiting in this area of the show with the majority of these coming from outside of Italy. This year I was in attendance to see how it differed from UK trade shows and to discover what they considered to be the worlds “best young design talent”. The conceptual quality of the products on show was impressive, despite most items being prototypes, the mix encompassed a wide variety of exhibits which demonstrated a range of advanced processes and new materials mostly in the realm of furniture and homeware. One stand that interested me was Marcantonio Raimondi, Malerba. They use a lot of repurposed and organic materials, keeping a lot of the character of the materials and incorporating it in the product, such as tree branches, very imaginative but it got me thinking about the extent to which they had truly considered commercial application and practicality of use. There were cupboards made from cargo crates and a wardrobe with a wooden replica of a human’s organs inside. Each item, if not realistic or designed for function did have a unique and engaging quality, this certainly made them stand out from the crowd, which I guess is what its all about when launching your own design career. 
Other items which caught my eye included Si Studio’s ‘clipped’ . This originally grabbed my attention as a simple product which everyone would relate to in form but set within a new context to provide a new meaning. The product is in essence a clothes peg, but one side has been extended with a pronged end to accommodate food.
It’s a simple idea, but adds character in a practical way to dining, with it being used as a cocktail stick or to attach bread to a bowl of soup. Having since looked at their website though, the Chile based company have some great products such as their ‘Hello neighbour’ lamp which is cut straight down the middle and ‘Origami Hunter’ series, which are lamps made out of paper and formed in the style of origami to represent various animals heads on the wall a far more humane way to decorate ones walls!The Japanese Umeno design had a wide variety of products on display including coat stands, bins and stools. Their simple and elegant shapes along with the use of bold colours caught my attention. They also have a sense of fun in their designs, with their bin swaying from side to side when in use and the shape of their table leg curving to accommodate a magazine
All in all there was certainly a great deal to see at Satellite, and this was just one hall of over 20 to get around! Its good to know that pushing the boundaries of material capability and questioning the veryday is still at the forefront of most new designers minds. Having questioned many of them however on their pricing and commercial processing intentions it was disappointing to realise that many hadn’t considered how their items would make business sense which rather belittles the vision to challenge the existing when making the new virtually impossible to realise.The Milano Satellite flies in the face of what is expected at the many UK design led trade shows even those with sections for younger designers where the focus from trade visitors is always on having the product ready to sell rather than purchasing IP whilst prime for development, perhaps this is due to the decline in UK manufacturing that less people are keen to become involved in R+D here, or perhaps it signifies British values and lack of regard for the creative industries? A selection of other awe inspiring bits from Saloni Satellite below:
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