New design stories at your fingertips: VENTURA PROJECTS

It’s time to get a better look at the upcoming second edition of Ventura Future (9 - 14 April, 2019). Ventura Future – partnering with the cultural project BASE Milano – is the place to discover the latest explorations of unusual materials. It’s also the playground where sustainable product development starts and where designers bypass the obvious and present us with a hint of absurdity to evoke meaningful conversations. And it serves as the perfect platform for institutions representing the best designers from their country or region, from Slovenia to the East of France, from Thailand to Turin – promoting their cultures and enhancing trade opportunities.

Designers are story makers pur sang. Over the last years, there has been a detectable shift from the designer of objects to the designer of stories. Ventura Projects has always been at the forefront of this development. The Ventura Future visitors will bear witness to numerous projects that question present-day global affairs. For instance by Isabelle Sanchez Jacques, a young Mexican-American artist, who will invite the public to consume homemade Mexican dishes while listening to anecdotal stories from migrant workers, thereby questioning issues like heritage and intolerance between cultures. She is not the only one working with food.

Food is a great tool to evoke personal memories. The same applies to scents. At Ventura
Future, SOM tales of perfume (The Netherlands) will present a fragrant experience. The visitor can move through a composition of 100 wooden pieces that are infused with various components of pure botanical perfume. The visitor will be treated to a deconstructed personal scent expedition. Diederik Schneemann (The Netherlands) is equally interested in the concept of personal memory and specifically in the human desire to collect. For his presentation, the collection Collection, Schneemann searches for discarded unique collections – from matchboxes to perfume bottles – that he transforms into new objects, telling stories of early memories and youth sentiments. Mjo Thabisa of Mash.T Design Studio (South Africa) is paying homage to the women in South Africa who look after their homes with great care and devotion. Thabisa is showing their usage of simple materials and old craft skills in contemporary designs.

Another topic that will be thoroughly explored during this edition of Ventura Future is biodesign. With the support of the Embassy and the Consulate-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Milan and curated by Organisation in Design, the project Future (H)eart(H): 8 Dutch Design visions for a livable earth takes you into a world filled with concrete base flowers that help preserve the ‘big 5 of pollination’ (Matilde Boelhouwer); it proposes ways of using synthetic biology to create organs that can replace the animal products used in traditional Chinese medicine (Kuang-Yi Ku); and it shows biodegradable urns that give our loved ones back to nature in a responsible way (Nienke Hoogvliet). All eight projects will show the latest developments in bio and conscious design.

A Ventura Projects connoisseur knows there’s no Milan Design Week without the presence of a selection of world-leading design academies. Ventura Future welcomes some new schools such as Institute of Industrial Design (Switzerland) and some frequent participants such as Central Saint Martins (UK), Royal College of Arts (UK), UMPRUM (Czech Republic) and University of Iowa 3D Design Program (US). The freedom that design students have to explore current topics never fails to excite. Design School Kolding (Denmark) asks the question in their exhibition: Where do we feel at home? They will visualise the relationships between mobile personal objects and the ideas of home in the presentation: A home is a home is a home.

Come visit this amazing event in Milan, get your tickets now online on our website!