NUMBERS. BETWEEN QUALITY AND QUANTITY

The rift between the pre- and post-pandemic seems finally to have healed with the latest edition of the Milan Design Week which ended yesterday. Numerous visitors, the whole city involved right into the most remote corners, success of the new format of the Salone at the Rho fair, wow installations and cultural events everywhere, aware looks at the future. Are you all right then? Yes but…

Reading the numbers, the one that has just closed seems like the Fuorisalone of records. Airbnb and similar sold out, en-plein in hotels, fully booked restaurants, besieged taxis, pedestrian areas (Tortona, Brera, Durini) transformed into floods of crowds, 1,500 events (or assumed) in Milan right to the outskirts extreme, impossible to count the exhibitors (design brands, architecture studios, design schools, start-ups, artisans, artists, automotive, technologies, fashion houses, food & beverage, etc.) on display inside and outside historic buildings, industrial buildings , showrooms and even private homes. Difficult to sum up the quality and quantity of attendance: we have always maintained that the latter is to the detriment of the other, but this is slippery ground, very questionable. The discussion on the subject opens every year, and stops there, leaving this critical issue in suspension. Instead, what we try to count are the visitors, Italian or foreign together with professionals (who move the business and advance research), enthusiasts (who could be the ideal consumers) or just curious people on a city trip (not too welcome by companies of design). Only that counting them is not easy, unless you have suitable recording and certification devices. The show reports more than 300,000 visitors, a fact that is certain and not deceptive. The figures of 100,000, 90,000, 70,000 and so on are those reported by the various Design Districts or by the most popular locations, the result of sensations or perhaps hopes, mostly without objective confirmation. For its Superdesign Show, Superstudio Più has chosen the opposite path of selection and quality to guarantee exhibitors a truly interested audience of design-addicts, which has been one of the keys to its success for years.
In via Tortona 27, in the large area that gave way to the widespread design phenomenon in the neighborhoods in 2000, professionals entered only if pre-registered or with local accreditation, while the public of visitors, attracted by the futuristic surprises of event entered, always on registration only on Saturday and Sunday.
A strategy much appreciated by the exhibitors who were able to focus on serious and constructive relationships established with the approximately 65,000 visitors who enjoyed an edition full of innovative and sustainable contents, and numerous facilities for their comfort, such as seats for the public, restaurant, centrifuge, garden, art installations, roof terrace and numerous talks to better illustrate the present of art and outline the future of design with words. That we increasingly imagine “Design for All”.