The international event dedicated to design returns from 16 to 24 April, involving the Rho Fiera exhibition center and animating the city’s districts with installations, exhibitions and events. This year’s focus is linked to the optimization of the experience and puts visitors at the center thanks to new layouts designed with the help of neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence.
Salone del Mobile Milano, the News
April is approaching, together with the event that brings the best of international designers to Milan for an entire week of events, exhibitions and presentations. The Salone del Mobile Milano, together with the Fuorisalone, represents one of the most important drivers of the Lombardy capital, capable of bringing hundreds of thousands of professionals and simple enthusiasts to the city, curious to discover the latest innovations in furniture.
Every year the Salone evolves following themes that reflect contemporaneity, sometimes cross-pollinating with other disciplines, to trace new project scenarios. The innovations for 2024, announced by the President of the Salone del Mobile Milano Maria Porro, begin with the new collaboration with the Department and the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano, which officially launches a permanent observatory on the impacts of the Design Week on the community, in terms of sustainability, inclusion and growth.
Human-centric Design and Neuroscience
The planning of the 62nd edition of the Show started from an intense work of interviews to exhibiting companies, visitors and steakholders, which led to the development of a new human-centric design that make people protagonists in an increasingly holistic perspective.
To achieve this result, the application of neuroscience was crucial, thanks to the experience of Lombardini 22, an architecture and engineering group that designed the layout by implementing the trade fair experience. In the first instance, the unconscious behaviors of the people who walk through and stop in the pavilions and individual stands were analysed, in order to create functional and original experiences, capable of promoting quality moments and contacts through new engagements and emotional experiences.
For example, in the EuroCucina and the Salone Internazionale del Bagno pavillons, travel times and spaces will be optimised, giving equal accessibility and visibility to each exhibitor. The classic decumanus will be abandoned for a concentric layout with a ring-shaped boulevard in which companies will look out on both sides, as if they were shop windows in the city centre. In this way, access to all the stands will be achieved by traveling exactly half the distance compared to the traditional layout.
Out of the Comfort Zone at the Salone del Mobile Milano
Neuroscience states that the human brain is incline to leave its comfort zone when stimulated by art, culture and aesthetics, capable of opening the mind to innovative approaches to reading reality. This is why the cultural initiatives already tested at EuroLuce last year will continue at the Salone del Mobile Milan. Talks and educational workshops will kick off conversations and debates, thanks to the most important figures on the international project scene.
Artificial Intelligence and Communications
To promote the event, Publicis Groupe created the “Where Design Evolves” campaign whose visuals were developed with generative Artificial Intelligence to understand, analyze and visualize the stories, relationships and emotions that the event brings out throughout the year. The multi-channel platform guided by AI-driven processes will analyze conversations on relevant topics in real time from the community, brands, designers and visitors, channeling the most significant reflections into a constantly evolving fluid platform. The insights will integrate human creativity with the potential of Artificial Intelligence, making the images of the campaign real containers of experiences, memories and conversations in continuous transformation to transmit the perception of the Salone del Mobile Milan “live”.
Image courtesy Salone del Mobile Milano