ALTROVE / Tortona Rocks
Tortona Rocks – the exhibition and communications format based in the Tortona district, and a cornerstone of the Fuorisalone – is experimenting with new design approaches this year by creating cultural short-circuits between design and the city.
Transcending the boundaries of the Fuorisalone district, where the exhibition contents are displayed in well-defined areas, Tortona Rocks is coming out of its historic headquarters at Opificio 31 to bring to life an annual project that will mark out new and unexpected urban geographies. Titled ALTROVE (Elsewhere), the initiative is a breakout project, this year setting its sights on the city’s Giambellino quarter. This spatial digression aims to foster a unique dialogue between Design and Milan, to shake off the habitual exhibition confines in order to enhance a relationship that is so deeply-rooted in the collective imagination, thus creating new visual and conceptual contamination experiences.
A matter of genius loci: Design and Milan share an elective affinity in which experimentation is ever more widespread and constantly evolving. Incorporating new, off-course urban spaces and areas enhances the diffused, endemic value of design and reinforces its role as protagonist. In fact, there has always been a dialogic relationship between Design – in all its phenomenological meaning, from product to strategies, – and territory. It is this relationship that ALTROVE will broaden this year, opening up to a selection of everyday places – from the library to the food lab – which allude metaphorically to how design is an integral part of our lives, and of the city of Milan itself. We are experiencing a period of profound transformation in the design world, where the revolution taking place is defining new approaches and processes. It is a widespread upheaval that animates the everyday, reaching into our lives in multiple forms, even passively. By introducing objects into real, everyday places, the aim is to actually stimulate a process of awareness by means of unprecedented “city epiphanies” that amplify the sense of discovery and belonging.
The design selection is aimed at talented young designers, interpreters of the dynamics rearranging the present era: from furniture design to experimentation with new materials, from product design to textiles. Interpretations of this volatile present which is redefining its own creative paradigm in response to current urgencies.
Tortona rocks a project by Milano Space Makers
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