Milan Design Week’s Hidden Gems in 5Vie District

MILAN — In the neighborhood where Leonard Da Vinci lived and worked on The Last Supper, the city’s design scene continues in his legacy, steeped in centuries of artisan traditions. For Milan Design Week, which started Monday and attracted a reported 800,000-plus visitors, luxurious homes, museums and palaces opened their doors to the industry’s most refined tastemakers. WWD takes you on a tour of the most exquisite finds in the Cinque Vie district and beyond.

Droulers’ Collezione

With its high-end vintage jewelry shops and its concept stores, Cinque Vie’s community organizers continue to poise this district as the Le Marais of Milan. That vision couldn’t be more alive and true than at the installation of Droulers, an architectural design firm founded by sisters Virginie and Nathalie Droulers, whose residential work spans from London to New York and even private yachts. This design season, driven by global demand for their bespoke designs, they debuted their Collezione Droulers of eight types of furniture and accessories made from unusual materials. The Nat Chaira chair, for example, is made in a variety of brass variations, luxurious textiles and napa leather, while the Damier rug is made from unexpected materials like agave, copper or silver threads and wool. Smaller accessories like handmade sconces adorn the walls, demonstrating the duo’s flair for ornamental detail and ultra refined taste.

Laboratorio Paravicini

According to Costanza Paravicini, a master artisan of coveted porcelain table ware, Laboratorio Paravinci’s atelier “Jardins à l’Italienne” (French for a Renaissance-style Italian garden) is a fictional concept. “We imagined it,” she said, starting to into the manicured greenery surrounding her upscale workshop in the heart of Cinque Vie and which she runs with her two daughters Benedetta Medici Di Marignano and Margherita Paravicini. Each, carefully hand-painted plate is meant to be placed on the table transforming the tablescape into a garden unfolding in delicate ceramics. The courtyard installation was curated by the renowned international studio Mary Lennox, who created walls of greenery in hyper-realistic volumes where small openings in the lush vegetation house unique and surprising ceramic pieces.

Marta Sala Éditions

Across town in the Quadrilatero district, in the dark, elaborate 19th-century halls of Museo Bagatti Valsecchi Marta Sala debuted her Marta Sala Éditions collection designed with Bauhaus spirit for a refined clientele. The Bagatti Valsecchi Museum opened in 1994 and was once the mansion of renowned 19th-century collectors, brothers Barons Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi, major art and furniture collectors of pieces dating back to the Italian Renaissance. Sala, who was raised and educated under the guidance of her uncle, legendary architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni, said she has a lot in common with the brothers and their visionary spirit.

“They were modern for their time, they were adventurous. It’s important to dialogue with the past because it gives validity to the present,” she told WWD amid the splendour of the wall panels, as well as the wallpaper, frescoes and marble columns. In addition to her new designs like the Velasquez coffee table made with Canaletto walnut created by Swiss studio Herzog & de Meuron for the Les Trois Rois hotel in Basel, Switzerland, she showcased brand new designs by Roman architectural firm Lazzarini Pickering. The collections demonstrate an extraordinary ability to adapt to both historic residences and minimalist environments with the same balanced presence, she explained. Sala’s exhibit was curated by Federica Sala.

Osanna Visconti’s World of Bronze

Designer Osanna Visconti unveiled her Magnolia and Bamboo bronze furniture collections in a private residence in Cinque Vie. Part of the whimsical display included pieces upholstered with Hemispheres Collection textiles in Milan’s evocative Cinque Vie district. The result: a dialogue — between eras, cultures and the raw poetry of craft. Hemispheres is the result of Dimorestudio‘s latest collaboration with Hosoo, a Kyoto-based textile atelier founded in 1688. From the candelabras to the cabinets and pieces of furniture, Visconti’s collections are distinguished by cast-bronze and by furniture and objects that take their inspiration from organic forms and are sometimes even sculpted with pieces the designer herself collects in nature. Every creation is modeled by hand from wax, using the a rare wax casting process — one of the oldest known metal-forming techniques dating back 6,000 years — and then fused in an art foundry.

Michael Anastassiades’ New Lighting

The Jacqueline Vodoz and Bruno Danese Foundation opened its frescoed, gilded rooms to the public for Michael Anastassiades‘ new collection of modular lights, inspired by his childhood passion for making kites from paper and glue. Inside the palace located near the Milan Stock Exchange, visitors were welcomed to a curated selection of archival objects that introduce the foundation’s history and set.

Constructed from Alexander Graham Bell’s simple tetrahedron cell, the Cygnet model consists of two equilateral paper triangles, connected and illuminated by a hidden light source.

Inside the palace’s Sala Doppia, Frame sets a classical scene aglow. Playful and light, it was influenced by the work of American painter and sculptor Ellsworth Kelly, as well as French painter, sculptor, chess player and writer Marcel Duchamp.

Milan Design Week will run concurrently with the Salone del Mobile.Milano trade show until Sunday.