Design Week, Triennale Museum, Milan, 16-04-2012

Design=Milano is the equation to refer to, in order to understand the Milanese 

FuoriSalone, an event organized for the first time in 1990 by Interni , when Salone del 

Mobile, usually held in Setember, was held instead in April, and that has now crossed the 

boundaries of a conventional market-show, from the point of view of cultural interest and 

experimentation, to become a festive event, the design project, invading the whole 

city.

In Italy, when you speak of design you inevitably end by speaking of Milan.

That explains why FuoriSalone came into being right in Milan, on home ground, and the 

development of which seems to be almost unrelenting, as for a week it takes up large 

areas of the city, that change into showcase “districts” luring the so-called “design 

community”, invading and conquering the city. Furthermore, as years go by FuoriSalone 

has influenced the city morphology, re-inventing and upgrading some of its districts 

permanently.

The April Design Week is by now a unique rendezvous on an international plane, felt 

by everybody as a transversal, spectacular and unmissable happening, apart from any 

specific interest in design.

Within this project covering the whole city, FuoriSalone takes up every space 

available, from the usual locations to traditional places such as museums and art 

galleries, on this occasion cleared of their collections to accommodate experimental 

furniture and objects; from “found out” places (workshops, warehouses, disused 

factories) to monumental places well-known to tourists yet “squatted” by temporary 

installations, thus “atypical”, The most important component of ‘FuoriSalone’, apart 

from the content of the many proposals, is the cultural-spectacular as well as market 

consumption – rendered in performances, installations, shows and experimental 

events – for everybody, spontaneously, in city spots transformed in “atypical” and 

attractive places, stages for a collective and many-sided pièce, that are also a direct 

“training” process on a planning-educational plane. 

A balance of the last few FuoriSalone allows to set a team effort historically, with 

Interni as one of the players, the result of concepts backed by a multilinear production, 

entrepreneural and creative context, that wants to be complementary and not opposed 

to the renowned Salone del mobile di Milano and that takes the city as ideal place for the 

interaction of a widespread culture to make design a factor of meditation, development 

and encounter.