Key exhibitions of the festival are combined into two projects: Design Superheroes and Mutant Architecture & Design. Design superheroes presented three interpretations of the home theme. The master of playing with light, Ingo Maurer, together with the young designer Axel Schmidt, brought an installation called “Ablaze-sentimento (s) travolgente”, which means a play on words where “perception” is both “distorted” and “shocking and incredible”. The authors show a burnt-out building, inside which a huge pendulum is slowly swinging. A ghost house leaning to one side becomes completely ominous when its walls are suddenly filled with smoke. “In life it is very important to be intrigued, provoked to act,” says Ingo Maurer. And his "house on fire" successfully copes with this task: many visitors to the Moscow Design Week took a long time to take courage to look into its windows. This installation was previously presented at Milan Design Week.
Another superhero of Moscow Design Week 2011 was Ron Gilad, an Israeli American designer. In his installation Neighborhood, the artist develops the idea of a virtual global neighborhood. According to the original author's idea, 17 metal frames, vaguely resembling the volumetric contours of traditional houses with gable roofs, should be placed in a circle with a radius of 20 meters - something like a phantom square. “Any house is initially a set of lines,” comments the designer. Its simple lines hang in three-dimensional space like pencil sketches. “I wanted to create a kind of abstract environment, consisting of fragments, which draws the viewer's attention in detail to what a corner, a door, a window, or a hole are. Generally speaking, my project shows how these elements create space,”explains Ron Gilad. However, in the realities of Moscow, the project was destined to mutate: placed on one of the alleys of Gorky Park, the steel sculptures of Gilad do not form a circle, but stretch in a straight line. Neighborhood has become Boulevard, the designer laughs.
The latest Design Superheroes project is Matrioshka Superhero by Jacopo Foggini. This master is known for his love for methacrylate - a material that resembles frozen liquid glass and has amazing light transmission. This time, the designer fantasized over the iconic Russian symbol - matryoshka. Presenting it in a section and painting it in bright colors, Jacopo Foggini created a rainbow stained glass window about 6 meters high on the wall of the Central House of Artists. According to the author, in his composition "the feminine principle is strong, culture, history and even philosophy intersect."
No less conceptual projects were presented by the Dutch artist Lee Edelcourt and the Italian designer Luigi Colani. In the Museum of Architecture, they show exhibitions in which they strive to unite architecture, design and nature. “We need to learn to observe nature and use materials at hand,” says Lee Edelcourt. She draws inspiration from birds building nests, while Luigi Colani admires the multidimensional design of the web.
The commercial part of the festival program was collected within the framework of the Mutant Architecture & Design project, curated by Gilda Boyardi, editor of the Italian magazine Interni. It includes "Spirit in a bottle" - a collection of pens, pencils, bags and glasses designed by Giulio Iaketti for Moleskine, "Lying Arch" Archetto Seating from London studio Sybarite, art containers "Lib (e) ro" from Setsu and Shinobu Ito, as well as three interior items from Sashadasha design. And on the territory of the "Red October" factory there was an exhibition of the architect and designer Giulio Cappellini Made in Italy. For his exposition, Cappellini selected interior items created at such branded Italian factories as B&B Italia, Driade, Agape, Poltrona Frau, Cassina, etc.
The uniqueness of Moscow Design Week is, perhaps, precisely in the variety of the festival program. And it must be admitted that the organizers of the festival deliberately relied on this, because modern design consumers, as Lee Edelcourt emphasizes, “love Philippe Starck very much, but they always prefer IKEA”.
