Prada Frames returns for its third instalment, with another trusty collaboration with Prada and Formafantasma running alongside Milan Design Week 2024. The multidisciplinary symposium returns after its 2022 debut in Milan’s National Braidense Library, followed by the takeover of Luigi Caccia Dominioni’s Teatro Filodrammatici in 2023, both of which have been a celebrated success.
Continuing to recognise the ever-important theme of the intertwining relationship between the natural world and design, Formafantasma’s Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin team up with Prada to present ‘Being Home’ at the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum. The theme delves into how the living environment can be used to address contemporary challenges, and focuses on how the home creates a dynamic and intimate space for open conversation.
‘We want visitors to leave with a restless mind,’ Farresin told Wallpaper*. ‘We will have speakers in the bathroom, or in the living room, the library and so on. I think this idea of having more intimate conversations will add to the symposium, which will feel very different than last year. We are looking forward to seeing how this will affect our content moving forward.’
Prada Frames 2024 by Formafantasma
(Image credit: Courtesy Prada and Formafantasma)
‘To be designers in this century is to be making sure that in whatever we do, we need to expand the conversation to other disciplines, to involve the voices of those who are generally left out of the design conversation,’ Farresin continues. ‘We need to challenge what design can do, as design is not just about aesthetics.’
The three day program is held at the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in Milan, which was a home until 1974. The space provides the perfect backdrop, as it is a complex example of blending different periodical furniture and objects within a home. The neo-renaissance house museum overlaps personal history and art history, with one of the earliest expressions of Milanese design.
Contributions to the symposium include Paola Antonelli, Brigitte Baptiste, Kate Crawford, Jack Halberstam, Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Anna Puigjaner, Alice Rawsthorn, Isabella Rossellini, and Françoise Vergès. They will have the opportunity to share and exchange intimate conversations and thematic lectures within the building’s various living spaces.
During the symposium, spatial-design studio Limbo Accra will be revealing ‘Euclid Stools’ from the Canto IV collection. Drawing inspiration from Dante Alighieri’s ‘The Divine Comedy’, and Limbo Accra’s design philosophy, the stools ‘reflect a journey through various realms of literature, architecture and design.’ The brutalist seating will be presented as seating during the founders, Dominique Petit-Frère and Emil Grip’s, talk around the theme of ritual and care.
The symposium runs from Sunday, April 14 through Tuesday, April 16. Admission to Prada Frames Being Home is free, based on availability upon registration at prada.com
Bagatti Valsecchi Museum
Via Gesù 5
prada-frames.com
formafantasma.com