Atelier Clerici is an independent event and exhibition project at the centre of the Fuorisalone 2015.
Situated in one of Milan’s most distinguished palazzi, Palazzo Clerici, brought together designers, companies and institutions experimenting with new forms of living and making.
The exhibition and events programme, organised by Space Caviar and Z33, offered daily performances and discussions amidst eleven exhibition galleries, bringing out new questions on the future of design as well as its links to architecture, technology, and global contexts for living.
A diverse array of installations, micro-exhibitions and events organised by some of Europe’s most renowned designers and institutions will animate the palazzo each day for the duration of the Salone.
From young practitioners to established actors in the field, Atelier Clerici cuts a cross-section through the most forward-thinking work in social design, material and technological innovations, maker culture, education, independent publishing, and international platforms for design curation and research.
Participants in Atelier Clerici 2015 included:
BIO Ljubljana, Brit van Nerven, chp…?, Commonplace, Coralie Gourguechon, Design Academy Eindhoven, Dirty Furniture, Domus Academy, Emilie Pallard & Niels Heymans, Gabriel A. Maher, Govert Flint, Jesse Howard, Kirschner3D, Konstfack, Leonardo Amico, MacGuffin, Maniera, Minale-Maeda, Opendesk, OS ∆ OOS, PIN-UP, PlueerSmitt, Prokoss-Mobilrot, PROOFFLab Magazine curated by Studio Makkink&Bey, Silvia Neretti, Space Caviar, SYNOPSIS, Unfold, Vincent Tarisien, Vitra Design Museum, Wiktoria Szawiel, Z33 with Hella Jongerius and Louise Schouwenberg.
1. RAM House by PROKOSS + Space Caviar
RAM House is a domestic prototype that explores the home’s response to a new definition of privacy in the age of sentient appliances and signal based communication.
As the space of the home becomes saturated by “smart” devices capable of monitoring their surroundings, the role of the domestic envelope as a shield from an external gaze becomes irrelevant: it is the home itself that is observing us.
The RAM House responds to this near-future scenario by proposing a space of selective electromagnetic autonomy.
Wi-Fi, cellphone and other radio signals are filtered within the space’s core by various movable shields of radar-absorbent material (RAM) and faraday meshing, preventing signals from entering and—more importantly—exiting.
Just as a curtain can be drawn to visually expose the domestic interior of a traditional home, panels can be slid open to allow radio waves to enter and exit, when so desired.
RAM house is a proposal of cohabitation with technology other than by a constant default presence.
About Prokoss-Mobilrot
Prokoss-Mobilrot has created solutions for storage and organisation for a vast range of business sectors since 1954.
Based in Bolzano, Italy, the company is renowned for its high-quality, made-to-measure shelving and archival products and services.
About Space Caviar
Designers from Space Caviar
Space Caviar is a design research collaborative based in Genoa, Italy, operating at the intersection of architecture, technology, politics and the public realm.
2. Database Lamps by Jesse Howard and Kirschner 3D
What if all of the information needed to create an object was embedded in the object itself?
This collection of lighting-objects is based on the dimensions of standard components found in manufacturers’ databases.
A software interface is then used to generate unique parts for 3D printing.
A reinterpretation of the classic balanced-arm lamp, constructed from standard metal tubing and adjustable 3D-printed parts.
Specialised springs are replaced with normal rubber bands and made with the support of Kirschner 3D.
About Jesse Howard
Jesse Howard
Jesse Howard is an Amsterdam-based designer who creates objects that question the established relationship between designers, producers, and users, and as a result speculate on new systems of making.
He graduated from the designLAB at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.
His OpenStructures designs and Transparent Tools have been exhibited in Z33 and “Adhocracy”.
About Kirschner 3D
Designers from Kirschner3d
Kirschner 3D is the Netherlands-based studio of two brothers focused on design by 3D printing.
Their goal is to replace future visions of the role of 3D printing with present-day realities.
By designing 3D-printed parts that can be cheaply printed but parametrically programmed, the far-off concept of accessible, tailor-made objects should arise in the near future.
3. Keystones by Minale-Maeda
Keystones, a compact piece that can be 3D-printed on-location reduce the design of a piece of furniture to a single connector.
Using lengths of readymade material that require minimal fabrication, the Keystone holds together the various components of a given piece of furniture without the need for joinery skills.
Only the most essential part of the furniture needs to be shipped, while the legs and tabletop can be sourced from the materials at hand. 
Keystones was awarded the Grand Prize at the Interieur Awards in 2014.
About Minale-Maeda
Kuniko Maeda and Mario Minale
Minale-Maeda was founded in 2006 by Kuniko Maeda and Mario Minale.
Based in Rotterdam, they work between usable products and artistic statements that interweave issues of craftsmanship, consumerism, and information.
4. Open Making Platform by Opendesk
Opendesk believes that a new industrial revolution is just around the corner—as online sharing platforms, open source models, digital manufacturing technologies and the Maker Movement develop, there is an opportunity to rethink how goods and services are made and distributed on a global scale.
The Open Making model offers design products that can be made locally all around the world.
Opendesk displayed designs made by local Italian makers in Milan and Turin.
Visitors were invited to join and help define the Open Making platform, exploring ideas around designing for distributed manufacturing, and integrating connected technologies into everyday objects.
About Opendesk
Opendesk Designers
Opendesk was founded in London in 2013 and is part-owned by its own community of customers, designers, and makers.
Opendesk provides workspace furniture through a global network of designers – offering them access to worldwide distribution without the traditional barriers to entry.
5. Timber by Vincent Tarisien
Timber is a table made of only two materials—bio resin and wood—designed to be created at home.
Packaged in a cardboard cylinder, the kit contains wooden pieces, resin and dye, a rubber band, and an instruction sheet made of Tyvek.
The user assembles the frame, mixes the resin to the color of their choice, and then pours the material, which hardens within minutes and locks the structure together.
The final outcome is a unique piece of furniture, created on-site by the user.
About Vincent Tarisien
Vincent Tarisien
Vincent Tarisien is a designer based in Paris, France.
He graduated from ECAL in 2013 with a master’s diploma in product design.
6. A Round Table on Tables by Dirty Furniture
Gather around Milan’s biggest table with design’s top talents to probe, dismantle and re-think the relevance of furniture’s most overlooked archetype.
In celebration of new design magazine Dirty Furniture’s second issue, Table, launching soon.
About Dirty Furniture
Anna Bates and Elizabeth Glickfeld from Dirty Furniture
Dirty Furniture is a new independent biannual design magazine that uncovers the relationship between people and the things they live with.
The magazine’s goal is to take a lateral approach to writing about design; we are as interested in what happens after an item leaves the showroom as in that which saw it arrive there.
7. Maniera Series and Maniera Interludes by Maniera and OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Studio Anne Holtrop, Christoph Hefti, and 6a architects
The idea is simple: since architects often have a close relationship with the visual arts, and artists are often inspired by the spatial environment, architecture or design, the Brussels-based design initiative Maniera attempts to crystallise these proximities into new design proposals.
In this manner Maniera functions as a laboratory where architects and artists can transcend their own medium by producing limited edition furniture series.
Maniera invites architects and artists who are inspired by the built environment to design series or small collections of limited edition furniture.
Each series has a clear concept and consists of 4 to 8 pieces.
Due to its designers’ architectural way of thinking, characterised by a clear awareness of space, Maniera furniture is truly architectonic, although each architect and artist approaches the commission from different angles.
Maniera develops prototypes in close collaboration with them and then produces the furniture in local workshops by skilled craftsmen.
Parallel to its series of commissioned furniture, Maniera offers a platform to artists from a multiplicity of disciplines who successfully branch out into furniture or interior design.
About Maniera
Amaryllis Jacobs, Founder of Maniera
Maniera was founded in 2014 by Amaryllis Jacobs and Kwinten Lavigne.
Maniera Interludes showcase cross-disciplinary work by highly versatile and multifaceted artists who translate their personal language and writing into idiosyncratic design objects.
Rather than white-box presentations, Maniera presents the furniture in various domestic surroundings, in existing interiors.
More than just a showcase of design furniture, the Maniera exhibitions give an excuse to examine the formal language and conceptual mode of thought, or ‘maniera’, of the architects and artists invited.
MANIERA 01 by OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen
In collaboration with engineer Arthur de Roover, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen conceived a set of three tables and a chair that focus on the fundamental.
The size of each table is dictated by the structural properties of polyester, aluminium and steel.
The chair is a “frozen” version of Thonet’s 1866 walking-stick chair, No.6822.
Undone from its actual folding mechanism, it becomes a contemplation on surface and structure.
About OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen
Kersten Geers & David Van Severen
OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, founded in 2002, is renowned for its idiosyncratic architecture, including utopian and non-realised projects.
It does not invent architecture but considers what architecture can signify and be today, reducing it to its bare essence.
The firm’s architectonic ideas start from geometrical corrections and rigid classifications, in order to measure the world as it presents itself and allow life to unfold in all its complexities.
MANIERA 02 by Studio Anne Holtrop
These furniture objects are based on the stone collection of French philosopher and sociologist Roger Caillois as pictured in his book The Writing of Stones.
Inside these agates, jaspers, and onyxes, we see images.
Anne Holtrop carefully selected fragments of the stones for his Mirror, Desk and Shelves.
The objects are hand-painted by Sylvie Van der Kelen, a specialist in trompe l’oeil techniques at the Brussels decorative painting academy, Institut Supérieur de Peinture Van der Kelen-Logelain.
About Studio Anne Holtrop
Anne Holtrop
Anne Holtrop is an architect based in Amsterdam.
His works include the Museum Fort Vechten and the National Pavilion of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
He directs the Studio for Immediate Spaces at the Sandberg Instituut, and edited the architectural journal OASE from 2005–2013.
MANIERA 04: “Dust Free Friends” by 6a Architects
Since Enzo Mari’s “Autoprogettazione”, affordable lifestyle consumerism has ousted messy, old-fashioned DIY from our homes.
However, today’s portable power tools, such as the cordless drill, the self-tapping screw and the dust-free Festool have also reponed the world of self-made furniture. 
In “Dust Free Friends”, a raw plywood panel is the basis for a catalogue of domestic furniture, ranging from tables and stools to folding privacy screens.
The plywood is decorated with wallpaper, that other dinosaur of Sunday afternoon domestication, cut and reassembled into new arrangements of colour and pattern.
About 6a Architects
Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald, founder of 6a Architects
6a architects was founded in 2001 and has become one of the leading architectural practices in the UK.
The practice is best known for exhibition spaces in delicate historical settings.
The firm is deeply rooted in making: unusual to the computer-dominated world of contemporary architecture, their office includes a workshop where they craft objects, mock-ups and furniture with collaborators.
INTERLUDE 01: Rugs by Christoph Hefti
As a textile designer, Christoph Hefti has a passion for handmade carpets.
His independent carpet designs are intricately composed in terms of colour and ornament, and then hand-knotted in Nepal.
The result is a series of functional carpets and works of art, characterised by vivid colour combinations and the creative use of texture.
About Christoph Hefti
Christoph Hefti
Christoph Hefti is a textile designer for the fashion industry.
He spent 13 years as creative assistant and print designer for Dries Van Noten, where he was responsible for research, design and development of fabrics.
Since 2011 he has worked as an independent textile print designer for Lanvin, Balenciaga and Acne. He is also active in the fields of music and performance art.
