The 2023 theme, Design for Good, highlights the focus on themes such as spirituality, the connection with nature, the relationship with our origins, the drama of incommunicability
5VIE Design Week, tenth edition, to the historic center of Milan
The event, born in 2013 from a project by Ernesta Del Cogliano and Emanuele Tessarolo, aims to emphasize art design and high craftsmanship: through the installations and the works of art and design on display. The 5VIE Design Week not only wants to encourage visitors to reflect on our contemporary society and on the role that design can play within it, but also intends to connect local players to keep alive the social and relational network of the area between Corso Magenta, Sant’Ambrogio and Le Colonne di San Lorenzo.
Previous editions have featured artists and designers such as Maarten Baas, Valentina Cameranesi, Luca Cippelletti, CTRLZACK, Max Lamb, Ugo La Pietra, Sabine Marcelis, Erez Nevi Pana, Jorge Penades, Raw Edges, Sara Ricciardi, Stefano Seletti, Studio Ossidiana, Sara Ricciardi, Rooms Studio, Roberto Sironi, Tellurico, Nanda Vigo and Richard Yasmine.
5VIE Design Week: 2023 edition
This year, visitors will be invited to participate in the program of events with partnership and non-partnership projects and exhibitions. The 2023 theme, Design for Good, highlights the focus on themes such as spirituality, the connection with nature, the relationship with our origins, the drama of incommunicability. Design is a tool to connect us with the environment and the others, also becoming itself a means to reflect on where we are and where we want to go.
All these aspects are related to the 2023 edition of the Fuorisalone, called Laboratorio Futuro, which, as every year, will take place in Milan during the Salone del Mobile. Laboratorio futuro invites participants to imagine our future, starting from the world and the reality in which we live.
The 5VIE Network, a project to network and create synergies
The 5VIE Design Week was created as a project of 5VIE Network, a neighborhood network started from the bottom-up idea of reviving the area around via del Bollo, via Santa Marta, via Santa Maria Podone, via Santa Maria Fulcorina and via Bocchetto.
As Emanuele Tessarolo himself explained «we were born ten years ago with the idea of creating, in the historic center of Milan, a network, a physical platform that could intercept the needs of creativity. Ernesta comes from fashion, I come from music, we thought that joining forces and intersecting the different segments was relevant. We did it in a particular way, similar to what is done in cities like London and New York, by going and taking an area of the city, in this case an area that we are fond of because we live there, trying to systematize it, trying to connect those strategic stakeholders that could be interesting and interested in what we were doing: the retailers, the institutions and also the cultural aspect that is developed within this area. We systematized everything and brought it to focuses of interest related to creativity. Using what we call creativity clusters, we started, we identified design as the first cluster and then we also worked with fashion, art, food, etc».
Enhancing the 5VIE area
Despite the changes related to the substrate of local actors actively involved in the network, the identity of the project has always been renewed, keeping itself authentic, focusing on the needs of enhancing the 5VIE area, now also recognized through a plaque that marks the intersection of the main roads.
Ernesta adds, «it started as residents of the territory. We crossed paths, we saw that there were common interests, even if only on the preservation of the zone, which was going through a crisis at that time in history. We got together: those who came from crafts, those from technology. We had put our forces together, then slowly the pieces fell apart because of personal needs, because of paths splitting apart as your choices take you elsewhere, and in the end Emanuele and I stayed just before Covid. More reason we must give even more strength and more vitality to this project».
The 5VIE Design Week and the Fuorisalone
The 5 VIE Design Week has a deep link with the Fuorisalone, although the first one is entirely dedicated to art design.
As Emanuele explained «the Fuorisalone week was originally born in this district. Few people remember, but the first experiments of designers outside the fair happened in these streets, even before Tortona, Lambrate, etc. So, on the one hand, it was going back to the roots, and, on the other hand, it was bringing a breath of innovation with an eye to art design. So, knowing all that they were doing in Brera, in Lambrate, in the other districts, we particularly focused on art design».
Moreover, for the 5 VIE Design Week project, there is not only a close collaboration with the other districts participating in the Fuorisalone, but also a close collaboration with the City of Milan and the Lombardy Region, which contributed to the event.
5VIE Design Week: Design for Good
The 2023 edition includes six productions, developed with international artists and designers, representing different interpretations of this year’s main theme of 5VIE Design Week: Design for Good.
They explore aspects ranging from the relationship with nature, through the combination of nature-technology, to the need for connection and relationship among human beings, to such themes as kindness, gratitude, and vulnerability. The projects will be exhibited at Casa Cesare Correnti and SIAM, the 5VIE’s headquarters.
A future for the Past, cabinet de curiosité, and Chronic Pain Orchestra
In particular, inside the headquarters of Casa Cesare Correnti, it will be possible to visit two installations: A future for the Past, by the atelier on entropy and curated by Maria Cristina Didero, that transports us to the Greek island of Tinos to tell the story of its precious marble and its craftsmanship through the objects of a personal cabinet de curiosité, and Chronic Pain Ochestra, by the Swiss artist Johannes Willi, who approaches the theme of chronic pain through the creation of a set of percussive sculptures.
Human Mandala, Prendete e Mangiate, Silent Hollows + #mirrors and Love Letters at 5VIE
At the SIAM headquarters, instead, it will be possible to visit Sara Ricciardi’s Human Mandala, through which the designer wants to make people reflect on human interconnection; Sara Bologna’s Prendete e Mangiate, in which conviviality becomes a metaphor for exchange and sharing of identities; and Silent Hollows + #mirrors by Richard Yasmine with the art direction by Sebastiano Deva, where nature and technology meet in an unexpected way.
Added to these is Love Letters, curated by Anna Carinick for Anava Projects, which has a strong autobiographical component and underlines the gratitude.
The Partnerships of 5VIE
Six are also the projects developed in partnership with local institutions, such as Arts&Crafts&Design at Palazzo Litta by Cologni Foundation and Design Pride by Seletti, a parade from Piazza Castello to Piazza Affari with music, exhibitions, and performances.
New collaboration are with Fondazione Istituto Buon Pastore, that will host From the Silence, a social design project curated by T12 Lab and Laboratorio Silenzio, in which the design object become a means of nonverbal communication and awareness of the condition of deafness and DOPO?, a cultural center in Corvetto area.
The district: 5VIE
Many institutions, galleries and companies in the district are also joining the 5VIE Design Week, with ad hoc exhibitions and initiatives.
Among the shows, as Ernesta said, «Irthi Contemporary Crafts Council project, which is about women, curated by Mr. Lawrence, with Studiopepe and housewives from Tokyo. Another project, in my opinion nice to visit, is in the Arsenale Theater and it is an installation made by CTRLZAK with music and technology; there will be performances and it will be strong. Another one is Casa Ornella, an apartment where they gave space and visibility to small brands, within a home atmosphere. Also, the project by Annabel Karim Kassar, a French architect living in Dubai. She is a famous designer internationally and does an installation in the Gilda Gallery».
5VIE: not only art and design, but also experiences and social innovation
5VIE is based on the identification of three different and interconnected clusters: the 5VIE Art and Design, the 5VIE Experience and the 5VIE Social Innovation.
As Emanuele states: «art and design is the one in which we find the part of art, design, architecture and that is concentrated during the design week; social innovation, which is a part that we instead develop more through a series of forum appointments, and the development of digital on which we have been working in recent years in an intense way that will bring new results, we hope, soon; the experiential part, which is perhaps the one that keeps tradition more at the center and therefore has the preservation of artisan stores and small trade, the systematization of the territory. These three elements interact and operate from time to time, because when we do art design with design week, at the same time, however, we collaborate and try to systematize the artisans, just as when we talk or do forums on proximity tourism, in the context of social innovation, we try to relate the visibility of design or art museums, that constitute the excellence present in our region. So, we mix the elements that are within these three big boxes that form the basis on which we then build our events and our communication».
Ernesta added «Our goal is just that: to develop a series of activities in the area ranging from linking with the school, because probably for the design week there will be a project with a high school, to communicating everything that is happening in the area through our social channels from time to time and telling about the openings of new venues, also involving activities related to Food and Beverage in the ‘design activity just to give life to all the different operators in the area».
Ernesta Del Cogliano
After working for more than two decades in fashion, Ernesta del Cogliano is co-founder, together with Emanuele Tessarolo, of 5VIE.
Emanuele Tessarolo
Emanuele Tessarolo worked for many years in the music industry, both in production and as owner of the Magazzini Generali club; today he is involved in networking and community through the 5VIE project, co-founded with Ernesta del Cogliano.
