Ventura Lambrate announces the 2015 exhibitors

We bring you some of the not-to-be-missed highlights! Ventura Lambrate brings you the opportunity to buy your favorite Ventura designs, together with online marketplace CROWDY HOUSE. Visitors can stop buy at Via Ventura 6, where you can grab a tablet and log in to the special section on their website to order products that you’ve encountered at the fair. Next to you are several designers working on the spot showing the making process of their products.

Moleskine joins forces with Ventura Lambrate to set up a Documentation Centre for design innovation. With the Moleskine smart notebook, Creative Cloud connected in hand, a group of young design reporters roam the once-industrial warehouses and streets to sketch and document its design objects, materials and technological solutions as well as its installations, crowd and spaces.

The new brand LABEL/BREED establishes collaborations between designers and manufacturers so they can share knowledge of the latest techniques and develop innovative products. The processes and results of its first five collaborations, whose participants include Chris Kabel, Studio Wieki Somers, Demakersvan,Christien Meindertsma and Marleen Kaptein, will be on show at Ventura Lambrate. Kaptein for example has worked with the Netherlands’ National Aerospace Laboratory to produce two chairs and a lamp with the help of the aviation company’s fibre-placement robot.

One of Ventura Lambrate’s core values is the importance of uniting and connecting people. This becomes visible in the exhibition of Logotel, who unites different designers that present work in one collection. 'NEED' is a multi-level storytelling: prototypes, products, services representing dimensions of change, created through the reinterpretation of needs. The Zuiderzee Museum asked Studio Kranen/Gille to dig around in its depot and discover forgotten props representing bygone cultural history. Out of 10,000 objects, the designers selected nine; these will be placed within lamps displayed in a special cabinet. The props don’t have original stories of their own but trigger the imagination and connect to contemporary design in surprising ways. Ventura visitors will be invited to draw a personal item they’d like to immortalise in a lamp.

Ventura Lambrate is located in the north-east of Milan, a former industrial area. Closely linked to Italian artisan practices and craftsmanship, several Italian exhibitors find their way to the Ventura fairground. They bring for example a collaboration between designer Paolo Ulian and Bufalini Marmi has yielded a series of furniture pieces that make use of optimised marble techniques. The exhibition also features the 40x40 collection: marble tiles, cut by a water-jet machine that can be easily assembled into objects. The special cutting technique means no waste material is left behind. Visitors can also experience how the wind can become a source of energy. Enessere Hercules is a wind generator that comes from the knowledge of the Italian artisans of the Vicenza area with a powerful engine and a unique design. And there is a special presentation by Scatto Italiano + Wafer Boards. The common points between Scatto Italiano bicycles and Wafer Boards skateboards are uniqueness, handmade, fashion approach, the care of details and manifacturing process (100% Made in Italy).

There are more academies at Ventura Lambrate than ever before – 24 in total. HONEY, WE NEED TO TALK! Is the presentation of Design School Kolding(Denmark) with 7 young, female designers and 7 leading Danish design companies welcome you to join the discussion. Another interesting project by an academy is by HKU Design (The Netherlands). They take you into the daily reality of designers: a flexible, multiform world in which designers develop themselves. A liminal space where they experiment, explore and discover. A presentation where questions are more important than answers. The Tomorrow Collective from School of Industrial Design (Lund University) is about exploring ways of enabling us to live a sustainable life in the future. Inspired by past knowledge of how to grow, make and be, the project presents concepts for modern tools and systems that can be used within private homes or to share in smaller communities.

This questioning of the world we live in is asked by more exhibitors. Koncern Design Studio presents Embracing Paranoia, design objects of this era, an era in which we are on the cusp between individual and collective epochs and don’t believe that this is our reality just yet. The GRIP team – a collaboration between Delft University of Technology, DeBende and Studio Knol – will unveil a dynamic multisensory space at Ventura Lambrate designed to help people regain awareness of the self. It uses lights and specially designed soundtracks to create a personal, inspirational atmosphere. GRIP has begun testing the installation with patients at a mental health institution in Eindhoven. They’ll invite Ventura Lambrate visitors to step inside the installation and comment on it, to help optimise the prototype and take the collaboration to another level.

Whenever you are feeling hungry, head to Via Ventura 14 where you find the restaurant Feeding Creativity by XFood and Officine Tamborrino. The dishes of Apulian tradition will be served together with drinks that make you relax from an exhausting day at the Milan Design Week. Particularly special about the place is that it stimulates social responsibility by providing people with differing abilities the opportunity to learn professional skills in a creative workspace.

....