Discovering the Design Paradise that is Milan

Milan has no history as Rome does, no romance as Florence does, and no beauty as Venice does, a British guidebook tells us.
Milan may lag behind those cities in terms of cultural legacy, but no other Italian city can match Milan in its skillful commercialization of the “Italian lifestyle.”


Milan is a city of designer goods, and designer goods makers have begun to engage in other kinds of businesses badged with their company’s logos. They include Bulgari’s hotel, Dolce & Gabbana’s bar and restaurant, Gucci’s cafe, and Giorgio Armani’s nightclub. Now nobody can say that it’s only Koreans who are addicted to designer products. “The entire city is overflowing with designer brands, isn’t it?” I asked an official from the Bulgari Hotel. “Now we market the lifestyle like a new fashion brand,” he said.
The recent International Milan Furniture Fair 2017 showed clearly how well the city sells its lifestyle. At the Rho-Pero Exhibition Center located a 40-minute subway ride from downtown Milan, more than 2,000 furniture companies had set up booths. This sort of event with state-of-the-art furniture displayed in super-size exhibition halls can be found in other countries, including Korea. But no other city has ever turned itself into a haven of beauty decorated with designer names like Milan did.
The heroes of the show were various pieces of furniture, and they were treated like prized works of art. The leading furniture companies are upgrading their products to such a level that they have invited world-renowned designers and star architects to design them. One leather sofa designed by architect Jean Nouvel had a tag with a grandiloquent aesthetic statement about how its “ornamental elements” were presented structurally. Zaha Hadid, the winner of the Pritzker Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in architecture, had a sofa. Herzog & de Meuron, famous for their design of the Tate Modern Museum in London and the Prada Aoyama Shop in Tokyo, presented their own lights.
The scale and quality of the fair, which was held at various locations around the city, were reminiscent of a biennial art show. It was easy and enjoyable to browse the items on display because all of the practical and useful things like chairs, dinner tables, beds, and bathtubs, were displayed together. Nobody complained if you took a rest on a sofa in a display booth, even at the famous companies like B&B and Driade. You could even open the drawers and switch on the lamps. Many visitors, including foreign buyers, husbands and wives, and design students, took photos of the items. Everyone carried yellow-green brochures that listed the fair’s 360 events, including booths at the exhibition hall and shows in hotel lobbies, around Milan.
But there’s more to an excellent design festival than just great furniture. The companies competed with each other in every aspect of their presentations — including their products, their booths, information desks for visitors, even plastic bags for carrying brochures. Some had even set up mini-cafes that served espresso and wine.
Formerly a cluster of factories and warehouses, the Zona Tortona area of Milan has emerged as the city’s center of design. The exhibition booths in this area were lit up until midnight. During the show, Milan was crowded with designers, design company officials, and design fans. In the hustle and bustle in the city, a Korean professor of design shouted, “Design means physical strength!”
Not everyone stayed up all night discussing furniture and modern design. Some were just visitors. But imagine immersing yourself in design, enjoying yourself to your heart’s content for as long as six days. Isn’t that a noble exercise? That’s how Milan sells its style.
This column was contributed by Chung Jae-yon, from the Chosun Ilbo’s Entertainment News Division.