More than 2,700 companies exhibiting at Salone Internazionale del Mobile, the biggest event in the design calendar
Hundreds of thousands of visitors have descended on Milan this week for the biggest event in the design calendar, the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, otherwise known as the Milan furniture fair. Now in its 50th year, the fair will be even more of a celebration than usual, with the organisers keen to prove that the global furniture industry has bounced back from recession and above all to reassert their city as the home of design.
Founded in 1961, the fair was a driver of the Italian postwar miracle, helping establish the idea that "Made in Italy" was the ultimate guarantee of quality. Much has changed since then. For one thing, there's the sheer scale of the event: 12,000 people attended that first fair, last year it was 329,000 – in 2005 the fair had to move to a vast new exhibition campus in Rho, outside the city. Secondly, the rise of China as a cheap manufacturing option has Italian furniture companies worried, a threat one of their CEOs recently dubbed "the attack from Asia".
Last year's event was badly hit not just by the recession but also by the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano that grounded flights across Europe. It's back to business as usual this year. With 2,720 companies exhibiting in Rho, numbers are rising again but have yet to recover the record highs of 2008.
If ever there was a year to celebrate the grand Italian tradition of furniture design, this is it, as 2011 is not only the 50th anniversary of the fair but the 150th of the republic. In the Triennale Design Museum visitors can see the industrialist Alberto Alessi's version of the greatest hits of Italian furniture – as if to remind us that Italy is not just the home of quality but of experimentation. Meanwhile, the octogenarian designer Alessandro Mendini's famous Proust armchair has been reissued by Magis, in plastic. But then the Italians have no problem celebrating their aging stars, it's the young ones that no one seems to know about.
The majority of the design talent on show at the fair is international. The Munich-based designer Konstantin Grcic is ubiquitous this year. However, there is always a strong British contingent. Of the London-based studios, Barber Osgerby and Jasper Morrison are showing chairs with Vitra, Doshi Levien has pieces in production with Moroso, while the stalwarts Tom Dixon and Ron Arad are exhibiting new work with Magis.
But the biggest change since 1961 is that the fair is no longer the only show in town. The deals may be done in Rho, but the city itself hosts hundreds of related events in showrooms, fashion stores, galleries and vacant warehouses. The fringe events are so numerous now that they take over entire districts. In recent years Tortona was where the bright young things would show their work, now it's Ventura Lambrate and Porta Romana. Here you can find exhibitions by students from the Royal College of Art or Design Academy Eindhoven.
This is the model of the design week in the 21st century. With more than 60 such events in cities across the globe, and new ones launching every year, design is increasingly seen as a crucial facet of urban economies. Milan, at least, can still claim to be the original.