Balkan Design in Milan initiative connects all relevant design presentations of Balkan companies and design collectives during Milan Design Week 2022 gathered around the informal Balkan Design Network established with the aim of providing mutual support and uniting voices in promoting Balkan design on international level. Balkan Design will be part of Salone del Mobile at Fiera Milano and Zona Tortona during Milan Design Week 2022.
Young Balkan Designers show at Salone Satellite is a part of the Balkan Design in Milan initiative which connects all relevant design presentations of Balkan companies and design collectives during Milan Design Week 2022. After its world premiere at Salone Satellite and Salone del Mobile in Milan, the best of Young Balkan Designers will be presented to the regional audience in October 2022 in Belgrade, at Mikser Festival, one of the Balkan’s most relevant regional festivals of creativity and social innovation.
Young Balkan Designers exhibition at Salone Satellite 2022 is organised by cultural organisation Mikser with the support of members of the informal Balkan Design Network: Nunc, Zanat, Gir, Prostoria, Boreal, Numen ForUse, Zornica Kuca, Belgrade’s Faculty of Forestry and Museum of Applied Arts.
Young Balkan Designers is a regional talent platform founded in 2011 by Mikser organisation, with the aim to identify, promote and develop creative potential of the Balkan region in the field of sustainable product and furniture design. The initiative also aims at unifying the regional design scene, strengthening its potential through informal education, mobility and residency programs, bringing it closer to the international audience and contributing to the restoration of multicultural cooperation in the Balkan region. Together with its predecessor initiatives, Ghost Project and Young Serbian Designers, the Young Balkan Designers platform has so far presented more than 1200 regional design talents.
Hall 1-3
Salone Satellite
Booth B02-C01
Nunc is a vision of inevitable progress, inspired by both the ornamental tradition and the rural context. Through our designs, we translate its values into playful minimalistic furniture, transferring its meaning into urban spaces. The collection’s character portrays the contrast between rational and geometric form softened by the materials, warm pastels and textures. These reflect the identity of Nunc’s geographical, natural environment, home to the well-known Slavonian oak. The products’ names communicate the character of their designs, and this is supported by the Slavonia region’s typical vocabulary combining Croatian, Serbian, German, Hungarian and Turkish words into an imaginarium of the ancient lifestyle, with sounds and letters solely unique to this specific area. The editorial follows and captures the spirit of the everyday, where the borders of the rural interior and the abundant exterior fade away, alongside the grandiose architecture of the local manor houses.
Hall 10
Booth E4
Prostoria tends to perceive furniture as something abstract, created on designers’ desks and then produced, branded and placed on the market by companies with different statuses and reputations. In fact, relations inside the contemporary globalized furniture industry are becoming more and more fragmented with less and less opportunity for complete dedication to synergies and collaborations. Prostoria, as a young company whose catalogue already comprises some new icons such as the Polygon armchair and the Revolve transformable sofa, stands as an example of a different and more traditional approach based on the evolution from the local factuality and logical clustering of all actors involved in the production process.
Hall 15
S.Project
Booth A25 B28
ZANAT
The only recipe Zanat had when deciding to introduce new products is to start with a vision and to care passionately about the choice of designers we collaborate with, the choice of wood and other materials, and the choice of master craftsmen with the right sensibility for the product. What has to follow—or even precede these choices—are always aesthetic and functional as well as ethical considerations. The question they repeatedly ask theirselves at Zanat is – how to materialize their vision into exquisite objects that introduce grace to spaces we inhabit, while not jeopardizing, but protecting and contributing to well-being of our and future generations? They do so by bringing to the table carefully chosen and exceptionally talented designers, craftsmen, creative minds and skilled hands, in a process where design is a dialogue.
Hall 15
S.Project
Booth E23 E25
Milla & Milli is a brand of the Croatian wood production company Mundus Viridis, which was founded in 2018 out of a desire to ecologically produce high-quality designer furniture from local solid wood. Over the past three years, the brand’s furniture has won numerous design awards, including a Red Dot for the Waves bar cabinet. To build the brand, a holistic brand strategy was developed that positions Milla & Milli as a nature-loving furniture manufacturer in the luxury segment. The close connection between luxury on the one hand and closeness to nature on the other also shapes the brand identity: the visual communication of the brand puts the unity of the two – partly contradictory – elements in the foreground. Thus, the logo picks up the brand name Milla & Milli in the form of two parallel lines forming an M and at the same time integrates the ampersand symbol. The visual language in brochures, product flyers, on cotton bags and on the website in turn combines images of the products and furniture textures with motifs of various forest plants and animals.
Hall 15
S.Project
Booth F23
Metoda, the method, is the path of research and reflection on form and design of seven designers who are open to innovation and characterized by great potential for creativity. From rational to irrational, the final products are the basis for experiencing variations: for example, the objects maintain a certain rationality of natural materials, such as wood or the texture of the lines and rings. Irrational erupts in a second moment through the interventions on colors, which allow visual variation and boost the potential of the conceived shape, universality and strength of the beauty of design. The project was realized with the support of the EU within the establishment of the Cekom Spin development centre, Požega. The following are the designers: Dc Orešić, Grupa Neisako, Numen/For Use, Regular Company, Simon Morasi Piperčić, Thinkobjects.
Superstudio
Via Tortona 27
During Milano Design Week Centre for Creativity (CzK) will present innovative products by Slovenian designers who break with the established, albeit often bad social habits. Through the products hosted at this exhibition the designers offer a critique of the existing economic and social systems as well as a different perspective on production. They bring new uses, new functionalities and materiality as well as a concern for healthy environments and society. They share a desire to reveal the background behind the product development process and the idea of using good design to build a community. They emphasise the value of combining digital and manual work, with the latter serving as a tool for people’s psychosocial empowerment.
Opificio 31
Via Tortona 31