Porta Venezia Design District L'Altro distretto was created with the aim of enhance and celebrate the modernity and diversity of the neighbourhood, giving voice to a more revolutionary design idea. Porta Venezia is a district of Milan, cosmopolitan, inclusive, with rebellious soul, expression of a city in continuous evolution and trasformation. Surrounded by a gentle liberty style architecture, is one of the areas of Milan that has shown the most expressive and decorative variety. An historic road axis runs through its heart, realising the plan to connect the city centre to the suburbs: a unique combination of architectures, histories, ethnicities make it a district capable of telling the many faces of Milan. The logo represents some of the iconic places of the neighborhood: the two squares represent the Bastions of Porta Venezia, the circle the Ulrico Hoepli Civic Planetarium, the rectangle the Civic Museum of Natural History of Milan.

Site-specific installations built in collaboration with designers and international editors and a selection of new and independent designers, will be key elements in interpreting the values of this new district.

The headquarter of the district will be the Meet Digital Culture Center, the first international center for digital art and culture born in Milan with the support of Fondazione Cariplo, founded and directed by Maria Grazia Mattei, (viale Vittorio Veneto 2), which together with the National Museum of Digital Art (Mnad), presents Everything, an immersive installation by Turkish studio Nohlab, for the first time in Italy.

At the Raffles institute (via Felice Casati 16) there will be the exhibition entitled "Where is design going?", an extension of the exhibition of the same name at the SaloneSatellite, dedicated to the works of young designers. The exhibition investigates the various fields in which design is applied today. Also the Politecnico di Milan, in collaboration with Leroy Merlin, involved its students for a project about a new interpretation of the domestic dimension. The Open House installation (Casa Nervesa, via Giuseppe Sirtori 26) presents three home ideas, created by the architect Maria Anna Tumminello, with the interior design course of the Milan Polytechnic: a real open house, an inverted structure, and a structure expressing the concept of well-being and energy efficiency.

Curated by Tony Chambers and Maria Cristina Didero, the exhibition Future impact (April 18 to 23, West Bastion, former casa del pane) in a shared laboratory of innovation invites six of Singapore's best-known designers to propose solutions for building a better future, answering some of the questions of our age: what impact will new technologies have, including acceleration tools such as 'artificial intelligence? How will the profession of the designer and of companies change? How will we deal with the problems caused by climate change? The six studios involved are: Forest&Whale, Nathan Yong, Tiffany Loy, Gabriel Tan, Viewport Studio and Studio Juju.

The group exhibition Abrakadabra of WonderGlass, a family business born from passion of Maurizio and Christian Mussati for glass and the Venetian tradition, will present in the evocative and nineteenth-century spaces of the Istituto dei Ciechi, (via Vivaio 7), a selection of works designed by Paul Cocksedge, Tom Dixon, Elisa Ossino, John Pawson, Elena Salmistraro, studiopluz, Bethan Laura Wood, and Dan Yeffet.

At the Park Hub, the space opened by the architects of Park Associati in 2017, in via Benvenuto Garofalo 31, the multidisciplinary design studio CaraDavide will present Estetiche Sommerse, Unveiling hidden beauty, an installation consisting of flooring and a collection of tables and chairs made from production objects discarded for technical reasons and recovered by the designers.

Finally, for this edition, Moooi presents a multisensory exhibition focusing on a physical and digital experience that combines the best of design, lifestyle and technology, at the Salone dei Tessuti (via San Gregorio 29).

Porta Venezia
April 17-23, 2023
www.portaveneziadesigndistrict.com

Photo: Studio Nohlab