Bold colours and striking statement pieces: The best highlights from Milan Design Week 2019

It’s impossible to grasp the immense scale of Salone del Mobile – Milan’s famed annual furniture fair where thousands of global brands launch their latest collections.

The world’s premier design event encompasses both the vast, purpose-built fairgrounds and also hundreds of pop-up shows and installations scattered throughout the city.

Both Milan’s attendance and the scale of the events feel more ambitious each year and increasingly more challenging to navigate, even for someone like me who’s attended Milan 10 times in the past 12 years.

As an Australian, perhaps the most cherished memory from this year was Local Design’s fourth outing in Milan, curated by Emma Elizabeth, who assembled the largest-ever group of Australian and New Zealand designers under one roof – 44 in total.

Standout pieces include the KYSS sculptural furniture collection made from solid brass and solid timber – a collaboration between award-winning furniture designer Tom Fereday and metal-smith maker/designer Studio Kyss – and Milan Edition pendants by Nicholas Fuller, whose work reflects the skill sets of both his fitter, machinist and instrument-maker father and grandfather.

No Man’s Land by Raf Simons for Kvadrat celebrated the fashion designer’s sixth collection for the textile brand. Vintage furniture covered in the new collection was placed in and around original Jean Prouve prefab cabins, while a field of wild flowers by the Belgian florist Mark Colle completed the elaborate mise-en-scene.

The exhibition championed new textiles with origins in fashion like boucle, tweed and corduroy.

Studiopepe’s manifesto project, Les Arcanistes – The Future is Un/Written, unfolded inside an abandoned factory. Guided by the principles of alchemy, the Milan-based design agency conceptualised an immersive installation that investigated man’s connection with the matter and the power of symbols.

Vintage and new furniture were arranged around slabs of stone posing as coffee tables, the walls and ceiling of the ex-factory had been stripped down to exposed concrete and the steel structure was painted a vibrant seafoam, while the molten glass screens in purple and chartreuse came alive with shimmering reflections reminiscent of being under water.

Milan’s newest design destination – Palermouno – is in a third-floor apartment in the upmarket Brera neighbourhood.

Founded by interior designer Sophie Wannenes, the 150-square-metre gallery brings together vintage, modern and contemporary pieces in a space that feels effortless.

Bold colours, striking patterns and statement furniture pieces harmonise and clash in equal measure, proving we ought to take a leaf out of the Italian style book and become unafraid to take risks with colour and pattern – possibly my top takeaway from Milan this year.