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During Milan Design Weekwhich encompasses Salone del Mobile, a furniture fair now in its 63rd edition, and Fuorisalone, the exhibitions held off-sitethe Lombardian city transforms into a spritz-fueled celebration of all things design. Historic villas open their doors to become showrooms for new products and furniture, interior designers and architects flex their creativity in site-specific installations, and emerging practitioners debut work to an international audience that is eager to discover fresh, exciting ideas. And lets not forget the brands. Milan Design Week has transformed from an interiors-focused event into a significant platform for fashion, automotive, and tech companies to express (or prove) their creative creds. This year, the following five themes defined some of the most-visited (and most buzzed about) exhibitions and installations in the city. Luxury Fashion Goes Full Lifestyle If the hours-long lines, fully booked by-reservation-only events, and Instagram posts are any measure, then fashion brands ruled this year. They have always represented an aspirational lifestyle but have been inconsistent in their vision outside of apparel. In the past, a handful of niche companies, like COS, Marni, and Loewe (under Jonathan Anderson) have created interesting installations. This year, the cohort was especially strong as these brands defined a holistic design-led definition of luxury. [Photo: Miu Miu] Miu Miu (with its heady literary salon), Loewe (with its intricate artist-made teapots), Herms (with its color-blocked glass furniture), the Row (with its monastic cashmere bedwear collection), and Jil Sander (with its monochromatic take on Marcel Breuers Cesca chairs for Thonet) colored in everything else that would be in the orbit of the person carrying their handbags. [Photo: Hartmut Näegele/courtesy Jill Sander] These installations also reflected a rigorous, research-based approach, including the sold-out Formafantasma-organized Prada Frames symposium that included talks on logistics and infrastructure and Guccis Bamboo Encounters exhibition. For the latter, curator Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli invited artists to work with the material (which has been a part of the brands history since the 1940s) and resulted in the Palestinian artist and architect Dima Sroujis series of found baskets embellished with baubles by glassblowers in the West Bank, which create a dialog between unnamed artisans and a craft tradition that is at risk of disappearing. [Photo: Gucci] The Rise of Theatrical Experiences With so many exhibitorsmore than 2,000 at Salone del Mobile and more than 1,000 at Fuorisalonethe bar for a memorable experience is higher than ever. An element of theater and performance defined the most ambitious of them, like Es Devlins revolving Library of Light, an installation that invited visitors to browse 3,000-plus books on illuminated shelves and essentially turned each visitor into a performer on a kinetic set. [Photo: Monica Spezia/courtesy Es Devlin] This included the Finnish textile company Marimekkos All the Things We Do in Bed installation. Developed by the artist and lifestyle doyenne Laila Gohar, the exhibition invited visitors to lounge in a 30-foot-square bed covered in linens in an archival pattern by Maija Isola that Gohar reinterpreted. [Photo: Sean Davidson/Marimekko] For Range Rover, the California-based Nuova Group staged an installation that brought visitors into a 1970s car showroom featuring actors that pretended to be salesmen. (While the salesmen were unconvincing on my visit, the Sleep-No-More-esque installation was a delight to step inside.) [Photo: Land Rover] And a micro-trend within the highly immersive experiences? Borrowing from rave culture, as seen in Willo Perrons trippy mirror-heavy light-and-sound installation for Vans (which launched a sneaker whose design is based on sound waves) and the fog-filled faux warehouse by Nike and the Berlin record label PAN built to launch a new Air Max 180. [Photo: Vans] Sustainability Remained Urgent Designers have been beating the sustainability drum for a long time, and this year the theme emerged in ways big and small. [Photo: Ed Reeve/courtesy Rockwell Group] Casa Cork, a collaboration between Rockwell Group and the Cork Collective, displayed the myriad ways that the natural, recyclable material can be transformed into furniture, flooring, wallcoverings, upholstery, and more. During a talk held in the installation, the industrial designer Yves Behar (who has designed a tower out of cork) spoke about how the materials porosity, versatility, recyclability, and thermal and sound insulating qualities make it a wonder material, but that it needs more publicity, particularly amid the plastics industrys propaganda over the last 50 years. Design accelerates the adoption of new ideas, he told the audience. Selling sustainability doesnt work. That said, Muji made low-impact living look irresistible in its Manifesto House, a modular tiny home by Studio 5-5, and its exhibition of hacked objects like a birdhouse made from a Muji bookend and wood drawer. The installation debuted at Paris Design Week last year, and the fact that this continues to have a life as an exhibition is testament to its message of doing more with less. [Photo: Ikea] An honorable mention: Ikea launched a new foam-free sofa as part of its Stockholm collection, using natural latex and coconut fibers as cushioning within the wood-framed piece. [Photo: Koji Ueda/At Ma] And while not scalable, the Japanese studio At Ma presented a wildly creative project in circularity that involved reimagining what a broken Borge Mogensen J39 chair could become. After finding one with a missing leg in a thrift shop, the designers have become obsessed with collecting and reassembling unusable chairs into new designs, going so far as crushing the unusable wood components into pulp that can be woven into new paper cord for the seat so that there is zero waste. [Photo: Koji Ueda/At Ma] I also appreciated R100, an exhibition sponsored by the Norwegian aluminum and renewable energy company Hydro, that featured objects made from 100% postconsumer recycled materials sourced from a 60-mile radius of Milan. While the pieceswhich included lamps, trash bins, and chairsare one-offs, they were each labeled with their carbon footprint, like a Nutrition Facts for objects. Thats an idea that could be scaled to many products to help shoppers make more informed decisions about what they buy. [Photo: Einar Aslaksen/courtesy Hydro] Process and Materiality Storytelling, process, and materials has always been important to designersespecially those who cater to the collector market. After all, it’s through these elements that personal connections to objects are created. However, this trifecta seems all the more urgent amid the rise in AI and what people can do that is unique and specific to them versus an algorithm. Human experience was at the heart of many of the exhibitions and objects (and was also the official theme for Salone del Mobile). [Photo: Matthew Gordon Photography/courtesy Kiki Goti] At Alcova, a fair of independent and emerging designers held in Varedo, a Milan suburb, Kiki Goti, a New York-based designer, exhibited Graces, a series of vases she created in collaboration with Murano glass blowers. Referencing matriarchs in her family and Greek mythology, Goti sketched the designs through a highly improvisational and physical process that involved sculpting small clay models which she photographed and then painted over. Glassmakers, with Goti working alongside them, then interpreted those images, which had no dimensions or measurements, into three-dimensional objects. Together, they adjusted the vessels spontaneously until they agreed that the pieces felt just right. [Photo: Google] Googles installation Making the Visible Invisible included an interactive light and sound sculpture by Lachlan Turczan as well as a display of the companys consumer hardware and the objects (and phenomena) that were starting points for their forms: a macaron for the Nest Mini, the surface tension of water for the Pixel watchs face, and a river rock for the case of the Pixel Buds. [Photo: courtesy Shakti Design Residency] The Shakti Residency, a new program that seeks to introduce Indian craftsmanship to a worldwide audience, debuted its inaugural collection at Alcova. Among the highlights were artist Duyi Han and Indian couturier Tarun Tahilianis ethereal embroidered fabric chandelier. Stitched by artisanal dressmakers and needleworkers, it borrows its aesthetics from traditional wedding garments. [Photo: courtesy Shakti Design Residency] Modernisms Lasting Influence Amid so many revivals of modernist design on view this yearincluding lamps by Tobia Scarpa by Flos, an Annie Hiéronimus sofa with a cult following by Ligne Roset, and the aforemetioned Thonet chairs by Jil Sanderthe level of execution in Cassinas Staging Modernity exhibition and performance was peerless. [Photo: Omar Sartor/courtesy Cassina] Developed by Formafantasma and held in Teatro Lirico, a recently restored 18th-century theater, Staging Modernity celebrated the 60th anniversary of its collection by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Pierre Jeanneret. It featured vitrines filled with archival drawings and prototypes that told the technical history of the collection and a play based on its history performed on a set composed of the arm chairs, tables, and lounge chairs the trio designed. Meanwhile, the brand Dedar launched a new line of five textiles based on Bauhaus-trained weaver Anni Alberss experimental compositions. Its refreshing to see a new interpretation of fabrics join the long list of heritage designs that design brands want to align themselves with, and work by a pathbreaking woman in the field at that. [Photo: Ilaria Orsini/courtesy Dedar]
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump has a long-standing grudge against wind power. So it wasnt surprising that when he took office in January, he immediately started to fight the wind industry. In an executive order on his first day, Trump paused leases for offshore wind projects in federal waters. He also paused approvals for wind projects on federal land. At a rally the same day, he said, Were not going to do the wind thing. Big, ugly windmills, they ruin your neighborhood. He declared a national energy emergency, but didnt include windthe cheapest source of new energy, and an economic and job driver in red states like Oklahoma and Texasas a possible solution. He previously said he doesnt want any wind farms built while he is president. Its a big shift from the Biden administration, which saw wind power as a key part of getting to a carbon-free energy system by 2035. But despite the policy change, some wind developers say their business is still booming. Tech companies are driving energy demandand they still want renewables Demand is huge, says Jim Spencer, president and CEO of Exus Renewables North America, a company that develops, owns, and manages utility-scale renewable projects. The biggest reason: Tech companies are racing to build data centers as AI grows, and need an enormous amount of energy overall. By 2030, global data centers could require more than twice as much energy as they do now, with most of that demand coming from the U.S., according to the International Energy Agency. I’ve been doing this for 35 years and I’ve never seen such high power demandwind, solar, storage,” Spencer says. Tech companies were early adopters of large-scale wind and solar projects, and still want to source renewable energy to meet climate goals. But there are also practical and immediate reasons for the demand: Wind and solar are cheaper, in most locations, than building new gas power plants (or restarting closed coal plants, as Trump wants to do). And renewable energy is faster to build. Because of supply chain problems, it can take as long as five years to get some parts needed to make gas turbines for gas power plants. Planning and building new power generation takes years, so new projects that are opening now have been in the works since long before Trump took officeand theyre still mostly renewable. The majority of projects that are currently sitting in the interconnection queue, waiting for approval from grid operators, are also wind or solar. The wind industry still faces challenges Thats not to say that everything is easy for the wind industry now. Even before Trump’s election, wind projects declined last year due to a variety of factors, from high interest rates and permitting delays to supply chain issues and rising turbine prices. Ironically, the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark bill designed to support decarbonization, also slowed down new projects. Developers were waiting for guidance about which equipment would be considered American-made and qualify for tax credits under the IRA. Because the law was also supposed to keep tax credits in place longer than before, there was less urgency to build. There was no immediate incentive for developers to start construction right now, says Stephen Maldonado, research analyst at Wood Mackenzie. Wind installations in 2024 were the lowest in the U.S. in a decade, according to a recent report from Wood Mackenzie. The report also lowered its projections of new wind installations over the next five years by 40%. One part of the projected decline comes from offshore wind and projects on federal land that are now threatened by Trump. Exus, like some other renewable energy developers, doesn’t work on either type of project. But the overall number of turbine orders was also low in the fourth quarter of 2024 and first quarter of 2025. Maldonado attributes that to uncertainty about federal policy. And though Trump didn’t specifically target onshore wind projects on private land, his executive order includes a temporary pause on federal permits for any wind projects. That could affect permits from the Federal Aviation Administration or Fish and Wildlife Service, for example. (Exus says permits are still being issued, though the process is slow, and it’s not clear whether that’s due to policy or the fact that so many federal employees have lost their jobs.) No slowdown yet Despite the challenges, and analysts’ projections, Exus says it isn’t seeing a slowdown in its own work. New renewable projects continue to come online, from a massive solar and storage facility that will soon open in New Mexico to support a Meta data center, to a wind farm that recently opened in Pennsylvania. The company is now working on multiple RFPs for new projects. Buyers haven’t hesitated, Spencer says, even as tariffs have raised the potential for slight price increases. Tariffs will affect renewables less than some other industries, he says, because the industry has been onshoring manufacturing for a decade, and the Inflation Reduction Act accelerated that. During Trump’s first term, wind power kept growing, with a record number of installations in 2020, despite a lack of support from the administration. (The solar industry also grew 128% during his first term.) More coal plants were also retired during Trump’s first term than Barack Obama’s second term, even though Trump had vowed to end the “war on coal.” It’s not inevitable that current policies will derail renewables now.
Category:
E-Commerce
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Despite the popular image of a strong leader as one who makes bold decisions and sticks with them, great leadership actually requires adapting to changing circumstances. A course of action that seemed like a great idea on one day may be a clear losing proposition when additional information becomes available. A complexity with changing your mind as a leader is that your previous choices and plans affect a number of other peoples lives. People who work for you are currently working to implement the plan you laid out. Others, like clients or suppliers, may be planning future engagements based on the initial plan you announced. Furthermore, your change of heart may have a negative impact on some of those people. Your decision may influence peoples jobs or the success of other companies. So it’s natural to feel some regret that your choice may hurt others. It might even feel humane to delay the impact of your decision to the last moment. Resist the urge to kick that can down the road. Why prompt communication is so important As a leader, you are responsible not only for the success of an organization but also for creating a trusted environment that enables people to thrive in their work. When you withhold key information about changes in plans, you may temporarily delay peoples disappointment, but you can have a more permanent impact on the overall environment you have created. The success of most plans is a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a leader, you chart a course of action, provide resources, and move forward. Trust in your leadership creates energy for people who work for you and with you to engage in the effort to turn that plan into a reality. When you delay an announcement about a change, you waste peoples time. They have invested themselves (and perhaps other resources) in your future vision. The longer you delay, the more of that investment they could have put elsewhere. That lost time will create a resentment that will likely affect how much work people want to put into future requests you make. So, kicking the can down the road rather than communicating quickly mortgages the success of future projects to avoid facing a hard conversation in the present. What happens when you do communicate effectively You may push off a difficult conversation to spare someone from having to get bad news, or perhaps to avoid having to deliver bad news. Ultimately, though, this delay does not avoid the problemif anything, it magnifies it. When you change your mind, some people might be upset. But they are going to have to find out eventually. You may as well get it out of the way at a time when you avoid other complications like leading people to make future plans based on their (now mistaken) beliefs about the future. Finally, you may be surprised at how well most people take it when you tell them of a change of heart. Often, other people also have reservations about a course of action you have selected, and so the people you fear upsetting may instead be relieved you have reversed course. Even when youre giving news that will genuinely disappoint someone else, they’re likely to recognize that not every decision in the workplace can go in their favor. Your colleagues are probably mature enough to handle bad news with grace and professionalism. So, your concerns about the consequences of difficult conversations ma be overblown.
Category:
E-Commerce
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