By Kevin Widlic, Contributing Editor.
At Milan Design Week 2024, aluminum reinforced its case as a feature material among designers and aesthetes from across the world. The various designs presented at the show demonstrate that aluminum can be a powerful material for more than just furniture.
Milan Design Week, or Salone del Mobile, originated in 1961. Beginning as a showcase for Italian furniture, the event, held every April, has since been turned into an annual circle-the-date journey for designers of all types—architects and interior designers among them.
This year, the seven-day festival, under the theme “Where Design Evolves,” returned to the trade fair venue Fiera Milano. Starting on April 15, Milan Design Week also included exhibitions, installations, pop-up events, lectures, and workshops arranged in other parts of the city. More than 1,950 exhibitors from 35 countries took part, and festival organizers say the overall number of visitors also hit a record-high this year.
Maria Porro, who has directed the Salone del Mobile since 2021, attributes some of the growth to increased interest from across the sea. “We’ve had a lot more interest from the U.S.,” she explained to Business of Home.1 “It’s a growing market, and American companies see a lot of potential here.”
The aluminum designs presented within this article were put on display at design week by companies such as Hydro, Emeco, BD Barcelona, Lehni, and others. The variety of designs and methods of utilizing aluminum demonstrate the versatility of the material and its potential use in interior design.
Recycled Aluminum for Sustainable Living
Industrial designers help influence material selection in all industries, which is why Hydro has taken part at Milan Design Week for nearly a decade, where nearly 400,000 people gathered this year to view the latest from the world of design.2 For this year’s festival, Hydro used the occasion to highlight Hydro CIRCAL 100R, the first industrial-scale aluminum product made entirely of post-consumer scrap. The company put Norwegian furniture designer Lars Beller Fjetland in charge of art direction, concept, and strategy for the exhibition. He brought together seven world-class designers to create objects using only Hydro CIRCAL 100R with the common objective of showing visitors how aluminum scrap could be turned into design objects ready for mass production.
“With this project, we acknowledge that we are moving toward a future where utilizing materials already in circulation is imperative for sustainable living and manufacturing,” said Fjetland. “I am confident that we will continue to use this exact material a hundred years from now.”
The project resulted in a variety of anodized aluminum designs, ranging from coat hangers to chairs to lighting (Figure 1).
Philippe Malouin, a British-Canadian designer, created T-Board, a system that uses T-slot extrusion hardware to allow users to construct shelving and simple items of furniture. A single profile acts as the leg or surface up to 6 m in length, making the shelving system adaptable to any room.
Rachel Griffin, an American-born, Netherlands-based designer, developed Serial, a self-supporting partition comprised of interlocking aluminum extrusions. The modular design allows for users to combine profiles to produce screens arranged in organic waves of virtually any length.
John Tree, based in London, designed the Billet Chair. Both the supporting backbone and the legs of the chair are made from the same profile, with the legs being separated with careful CNC cuts that allow the backbone and legs to be separately bent—thus creating the structure from a single part. Another profile forms the seat and back of the chair, which are attached with a clipping detail.
Andreas Engesvik, a Norwegian designer, created the Tsuba, a freestanding coat hanger made from extruded profiles (both for the stem and hooks). The hangers are adjustable in height, so they can be used by either adults or children.
Inga Sempé, a French designer, developed the Grotte, a collection of table lamps in which two profiles slide one inside the other. The inner profile hides the direct source of light, while the outer profile supports the inner—and together they softly catch the light.
Max Lamb, based in the U.K., designed the Prove Light, which is composed of two separate aluminum profiles, including the shade and base, which are connected together using a friction ball and socket joint. These extrusions can be disassembled and interchanged to compose lights with different heights and colors.
Shane Schneck, an American designer, based in Stockholm, created the Nave, a series of curved profiles that “can be used as carafes, vases, or objets d’art that diverge from the common purpose and use.” He noted that the design is meant to show the malleability of aluminum and the “nature of human inexactitude.”
“Innovation starts at the drawing board, so collaborating with designers at the beginning of the process is key to creating something remarkable,” said Asle Forsbak, marketing and communication director at Hydro Extrusions. “When designers, engineers and material specialists unite, innovation happens.”
Aluminum Chairs that Last
In 1944, in the midst of World War II, Emeco began building chairs for U.S. Navy ships. The Navy wanted lightweight chairs that were non-corrosive, fire-resistant, non-magnetic, and torpedo-proof. Together with experts from Pennsylvania-based Alcoa, Emeco took salvaged aluminum and developed a process that turned the scrap metal into chairs of extraordinary strength. Even today, the company is building the 1006 Navy collection of furniture in exactly the same way.
As part of its 80-year celebration, the company attended Milan Design Week with an “Emeco to Emeco” exhibition created by British designer Jasper Morrison (Figure 2). “The exhibition explores the transformation of the company from a supplier to the military to one of the most coherent brand identities in the design world,” said Morrison.3
Emeco has been part of Milan Design Week for more than 20 years. Company owner and CEO Gregg Buchbinder said that the event is “not only a great time of year to catch up with collaborators and friends from around the world, but also to dip your toes in the conversations about what is important right now.”
Emeco started using scrap aluminum during the war because it was a wartime necessity. Over the years, noted Buchbinder, it became an ongoing direction. Recycling is part of the company’s 77-step process for manufacturing chairs, which includes cutting, bending, forming, welding, heat treatment, hand brushing, and anodization.
“There’s a sense of warmth the aluminum is able to convey when the extrusion edges are softened and the material is brushed,” said Buchbinder. “The designers we work with know the importance of approachability, especially in metal, and always design with the material in mind. Designs with softer edges and shapes appear warmer. Also, since all our products are handcrafted, there are small signs of unique craft in each product, which add humanity and warmth. Our clear anodized natural aluminum generally goes with anything. It complements other materials. In interior design and architecture as well as in product design, we often combine aluminum with other materials, such as wood and upholstery.”
Buchbinder points out that Emeco’s aluminum chairs are warranted for 150 years. “This is, to us, such a benchmark of what it means to design for longevity,” he explained. “Aluminum is a smart material that ticks a lot of boxes in terms of features our customers are looking for—light weight, strength, durability outdoors, easy maintenance—but also in terms of sustainability. Aluminum is endlessly recyclable, which is great, but our goal is to reduce our impact by making furniture with incredibly long lifespans. Our goal is to ensure we design and make aluminum products that will be useful and relevant for generations to come—that’s how we define sustainability.”
Innovative Chairs and Tables from Spain
BD Barcelona is a Spanish furniture design company that was founded in a nightclub in 1972 by a bunch of young local architects and designers. Their idea was to produce and market their own designs and those of their friends with complete creative freedom and open design criteria.
At Milan Design Week, BD Barcelona collaborated with the renowned Dutch artist and designer Sabine Marcelis on a new chair concept. The Stedelijk Chair is produced by BD Barcelona out of 100% aluminum (Figure 3). It was commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam for use in the entrance area of the museum, which is set to open later this year.
The Stedelijk Chair was the first chair designed by Marcelis, who is generally known for her vibrant use of colors. But this time, she went with aluminum only, highlighting the single material used in the chair.
“I wanted to create something timeless,” said Marcelis. “I feel that stripping a design down to the essentials and working with a single material creates a simplicity that allows the design to be implemented in many different settings throughout different eras hopefully. As the design is made specifically for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, I wanted it to work throughout the different spaces without being too intrusive.”
Lightweight and stackable, the Stedelijk Chair fits the needs of a communal space. It is composed entirely of aluminum, transitioning seamlessly from legs to backrest, reinforcing the integrity of the material while also spotlighting its natural luster and strength.
BD Barcelona also has an Aluminium Collection of shelving systems and tables designed by Lluís Clotet, Konstantin Grcic, and Oscar Tusquets. Their collection began in 1973 with the Hialina shelf, designed by Tusquets and Clotet, which uses extruded aluminum. The two designers continued some years later with their Cornisa shelf and then the Hypostila system, which BD says inspired Grcic’s Table B in 2005.4
The collection utilizes recycled low-carbon aluminum products delivered by Hydro’s extrusion plant in Navarra, Spain, with a carbon footprint per kg of aluminum that is less than 25% of the global average.5
A Classic in Swiss Design
Lehni is a family-owned Swiss company that has been producing aluminum furniture since the 1960s. At Milan Design Week, the company featured one of its most important products, what the company calls “a classic” in Swiss furniture design, an aluminum shelf created by Andreas Christen for the Swiss National Exposition of 1964 in Lausanne. The company describes the shelf as being “extremely light in relation to its high load-bearing capacity, [owing] its stability to the precisely bent aluminum sheets and the cross-brace at the back. Countless shelf combinations can be put together from a limited number of parts. Due to its low weight, the shelf can be moved effortlessly and can be dismantled without any special tools. It can be equipped with additions such as drawers, sliding doors, pull-out shelves, wardrobe rails, and other elements.”6
Additional Designs
A number of other brilliant designs shown at Milan Design Week also had aluminum at their core. Sebastian Herkner, a German designer, and Decor Walther, a Germany furniture manufacturer, unveiled the OF.LINE collection in Milan. The series of bathroom accessories is characterized by a combination of aluminum and porcelain. Herkner noted,7 “We selected particular sensual and authentic materials, such as solid aluminum, rather than tubular aluminum.”
Knoll, a modern furniture manufacturer, had a pavilion designed by OFFICE along with color designer Salem van der Swaagh and architect Pernilla Ohrstedt. Its pavilion with interconnected rooms using aluminum profiles and glass partitions to recreate a 100% reusable domestic space.
Ronan Bouroullec, a Paris-based designer and artist, used aluminum in his new Passage chair for the Spanish company Kettal. The stackable chair has an entirely aluminum structure composed of legs and armrests, with a piece of aluminum making up the seat.8
Designed by Alberto Mancini, Matteo Thun, and Antonio Rodriguez, the “motoryachts” of the Azimut Benetti Group’s Seadeck Series are prioritizing reduced greenhouse gas emissions in their production materials. Azimut uses aluminum in its luxury yachts.
The ID Trim L Pepita Edition designer office chair was created by Vitra for Porsche. The limited-edition chair (with only 911 units produced) uses the original Porsche Pepita fabric on the seat and back. The chair armrests and foot base are made of black-coated aluminum.
Seoul-based design studio Niceworkshop and the upcycling brand Format presented their project, the Aluminum Formwork Series. Niceworkshop uses Format’s aluminum formwork, a component that is often reused at construction sites after removing surface concrete debris, as part of its new furniture series.9
Triennale di Milano, the museum of art and design, hosted an exhibition of walking sticks and canes. At the exhibition, Danish designer Cecilie Manz showed a cane she designed in anodized aluminum that was beautifully simple and structurally designed for easy use.10
References
- Volner, Ian, “Americans in Milan: Why Salone is drawing so many stateside visitors,” Business of Home, April 24, 2024.
- “Launching scrap as a design material: Hydro presents circular exhibition at Milan Design Week,” Hydro, April 16, 2024.
- “80 years, and counting,” Emeco.
- “Aluminium Collection,” BD Barcelona.
- Lei, Leo, “Sabine Marcelis Shifts From Colorful to Monochrome With the Stedelijk Chair,” Design Milk, April 25, 2024.
- “Aluminium Shelf,” Lehni.
- “Decor Walther Introduces OF.LINE,” Decor Walther.
- “Design for Every Setting: Ronan Bouroullec’s Passage Collection,” Archi Scene, April 17, 2024.
- “Aluminum Formwork Series,” Niceworkshop.
- “Stok,” Cecilie Manz Studio.
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the June 2024 issue of Light Metal Age. To receive the current issue, please subscribe.