We are curiously awaiting Zona Tortona this year. While its sheer variety caused confusion among younger visitors and mixed feelings among the older crowd last year, there is no denying how it has consolidated its position over the years, developing into the outpost for international creativity and the promotion of emerging talent. Design Week in Zona Tortona is nothing short of byzantine: big companies line up alongside emerging designers, students who have won international prizes alongside material exhibits, not to mention the inevitable boutiques offering the same old screen-printed longboards and uncomfortable 3D-printed bowties.
Raumplan and Trouble Making reign supreme at BASE this year, with an exhibition on city making seen through the filter of Platform Capitalism. Ikea is organising a Design Supermarket at Superstudio Più, with flat-pack projects from 18 designers coordinated by Niklas Jacob from Holland.
Containerwerk is present with two micro-living and temporary housing projects to narrate the transformation of contemporary living spaces. The Asia Design Pavilion is here, perhaps following in the footsteps of Chinese collective Róng Contemporary Design Exhibition, which experimented with the use of traditional Chinese materials during the second edition of Tortona 2017. This reiterates the district’s interest in material research in all its forms, as the presence of Napapijri embodies the continuation of the digital manufacturing saga that was discussed in the Manifattura 4.0 exhibition last year. In some ways, this event represents a progressive shift towards the coming together of small self-production technology and the large market stakeholders. All this is rounded off with the now well-established Archiproducts by Opificio 31, along with various other pop-up stores such as brand new +d & soil, showing that in Tortona, design isn’t just research and discussion of hot topics, but also a good way to boost the economy.