The 2012 Milan Furniture Fair is already in full swing and there is plenty of eye candy around to whet the appetite. This year, the fair includes the best new design from all the key brands, plus kitchen and bathroom products via EuroCucina and Salone Internazionale del Bagno. In the city there is plenty of design, with precincts centred around Zona Tortona, Brera and Ventura Lambrate. Spazio Rossana Orlandi is a highlight – this year, Canadian glass brand Bocci has created an installation designed by Omer Arbel in the courtyard, while elsewhere, new designs include a lampshade collection by Front Design for Booo and Nendo’s Growing Vases for Lasvit.

The National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci is the site of the most talked-about new exhibit at the Milan Furniture Fair – MOST. The sixteenth-century building, originally a monastery, provides a rich backdrop to the work on display, with its historic cloisters now festooned with outstanding design by a range of designers and brands. Initiated by Tom Dixon, MOST features his work in four different spaces. This work includes Luminosity, a series of tunnels lit by his lights and two huge machines punching and folding metal on site to create lamps and chairs for visitors to take away. La Cura is an interactive experience by Studio Toogood for Nivea, which involves performance art and audience participation involving shaping clay and using Nivea’s skincare products. 

Quinze & Milan and David Weeks’ contribution is bold – a foam object and lounger in the shape of a huge robot called Cubebot. A small wooden version of the bot is on sale by collaborators Areaware. San Francisco-based designer Yves Behar’s contribution to MOST is the SodaStream Source. Incorporating environmental principles, Behar has reinvented the original SodaStream, creating soft drinks from water and eliminating throw-away bottles. For the exhibition, he has created a “SodaBar” with a chandelier installation made of 550 disposable plastic water bottles. Other new brands on show at the Fair include New Zealand designers Resident, who are showing in Milan for the first time, plus Blu Dot, La Chance, Molo, SCP and Tumi (to name just a few). 

And, to keep guests going, there is free gelato from the Carpigiani Gelato University (plus lessons on traditional gelato making!) and a pop-up restaurant. Called Spring Table, the restaurant serves diners in the historic cloisters of the building during the day and in the frescoed original monks’ dining room in the evening. Overall, MOST is impressive – a truly experiential project.   

Elsewhere, luxury brands are getting in on the act in Milan this year. Colour One for Mini is an exhibition created by Dutch designers Scholten & Baijings, in which they have taken the iconic car and “peeled it like an onion,” exhibiting the ghost-like, pastel-coloured pieces. Also from the luxury car world, Mercedes-Benz has created its own furniture range including a sofa, chair and sideboard, all of which feature dynamic curved metal elements that pay direct homage to the sleek lines of their automotive design. And Italian fashion label Marni has released a series of colourful Colombian chairs – the one-off range of one hundred chairs was woven from PVC by Colombian ex-prisoners and shown at the pop-up Marni boutique, with proceeds going to charity. 

In terms of designers to watch, there’s been a lot of buzz around Oki Sato, otherwise known as Nendo, a Canadian-born designer based in Japan. According to one report, Nendo is the busiest designer of this year’s fair. Highlights include whiter-than-white ceramics for 1%, plus his new range for Bisazza Bagno, which is an essay in simple beauty. Lee Broom has also been gaining a lot of attention for his eponymous brand – the young London designer has come to furniture design via the theatre and fashion design and is creating waves for products like the Crystal bulb. But probably the biggest name in design, Philippe Starck, has brought an even bigger celebrity to this year’s fair – Lenny Kravitz. That’s right – the rocker has entered the world of design. Six Mademoiselle armchairs, originally created by Starck for Kartell, have been reissued by the Kravitz Design Team under the heading Kartell Goes Rock. Now that’s star power.