If you're going to Milan (Be sure to wear...good shoes) Part 1

The Milan furniture fair took place last month. While this event has probably passed you unnoticed, it sends a tingle up the spine of interior designers everywhere each year around Easter. So naturally, I had April 12^th-17^th marked bright red in my calendar. There are a couple of international furniture fairs all around the globe, but the Salone Internazionale del Mobili is by far the biggest and most important one in furniture business. It’s also pretty influential; companies present their new products for the first time and very often the reception of the product decides whether it’s ever going to be produced or not. It’s like the fashion week in New York, or Milan for that matter. The LA Times calls it “a design frenzy that dwarfs this city's famed fashion week in size.” True. I was there in 2006 and, unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes, you won’t believe how big it is. This year there were nearly 2.3 million sq. ft. for you to explore and furniture exhibits by more than 2,700 companies to marvel at. Luckily enough, the LA Times has broken this down for us: 2.3 million sq. ft. is a space larger than 39 football fields or 482 pro basketball courts.

Imagine walking all this. Sounds fun, huh? Let’s instead have a look at this year’s highlights right here on our computer screen.

 

MegaPhone

The most astonishing piece this year was probably the MegaPhone, a passive amplifier for your iPhone or iPod. Made of ceramic and walnut, it pleases the design esthetic’s critical eyes, while the back-in-the-day sound it gives to modern music wins over the average customer. Wanna tune in to the good old times, too? Get your digital gramophone for €399.

Coffee Bench

Have you ever found yourself sitting on a bench in the park, trying to enjoy your lunch break with your coffee in one hand and food in the other? And all the relaxation you yearned for doesn’t come simply because you don’t know where the hell to put all your stuff? Send your Thank-you notes to Szymon Nawoj and Karolina Tylka because they designed the one and only Coffee Bench with flippable parts that can be arranged to suit your immediate need for an armrest, a table or simply a small place to put down your coffee cup. After you’re done with sending the Thank-you cards, you can try to convince your mayor to replace all the ordinary benches in your favorite park with this handy, multifunctional piece of furniture. Good luck with that.

Vibia Lamps

Do you like pancakes? I do. Maybe that’s why my heart started beating faster when I saw these new lamps by Vibia for the first time. They are so fragile and thin, they’re hardly there. Yet the design message they send out to the world couldn’t be more sophisticated: We’re purist lamps, design statements that have nothing fancy to us because we’re breathtaking the way we are. And we’re a forerunner in LED lighting.

So in the future, you better watch out for pendulating pancakes.

Read part two to find out about bird’s nests for humans, oversized puzzles, amoebic coffee tables, marshmallow sofas and how to please Poison Ivy.

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CORRECTION: The price of the MegaPhone has been changed to reflect the current sale price.