The seventh edition of ARCHITECT@WORK Milan has come to a successful close: over 3,000 visitors for the 190 exhibitors present, with particular appreciation by participants for the quality of the proposals and the opportunity to finally meet live again.
At MiCo in Milan, during the two intense days of 3 and 4 November, we talked about an ingredient in architecture which, although impalpable and invisible, draws voids as opposed to solids and, par excellence, is synonymous with breath and lightness: Oxygen.
Alfonso Femia, one of the protagonists of the seminars on the calendar, talks about oxygen as a material and as a trigger for dilating and compressing. Rhythms and sequences concretize these actions and make them legible, almost without our being aware of it, on the facades of the buildings that design the landscape and form the backdrop to our daily lives.
Architecture, both in its outer shell and in its interior spaces, is therefore a real organism and, as such, lives on materials and technologies that are now increasingly developed with a view to sustainability, regeneration and ethical use throughout the entire life cycle.
Many proposals in line with these values have intrigued the audience of visitors and professionals from the architecture, construction and design sectors along the ARCHITECT@WORK Milan 2021 exhibition route.
The resumption of the event in presence, also followed online on a dedicated platform, saw an increase in products and solutions capable of combining several levels of sensitivity and, therefore, of generating an innovative design approach. After the prolonged solely digital sharing experienced during the pandemic, there emerged, in a strongly communicative way, a focus on the tactile aspect of surfaces, to be explored on the tips of the fingers and appreciated in their three-dimensional qualities.
Design and experience were the key words of the event, which, with perhaps even greater energy than in past editions (the last was in 2019, again in Milan), thrives on specific qualities that are difficult to associate with others in the sector: direct contact, in the space of the booth, between specifier and manufacturer, networking in the lounge areas created between the various exhibition blocks, immediate operability of the proposals, both in terms of novelties and updates.
ARCHITECT@WORK will return to Italy in autumn 2022 with two editions: in Turin on 5 and 6 October and again in Milan on 9 and 10 November.