“A letto con il DESIGN – Sleeping with DESIGN” was held at Via Cosenz 44/4 in Milan’s Bovisa area, a district that is already fertile ground for innovation, experimentation and visual arts due to the presence of Politecnico di Milano’s School of Design and Polihub, one of the most important Italian start-up incubators

” Sleeping with Design ” was held inside an early 1900’s 3 level factory, recently turned into the largest Maker Space in Italy; a place where life and exhibition are mixed together thanks to day and night events designed to narrate design as a social fact, a human process for human beings.

The initiative, designed by Ghigos, is organized by MakersHub and IDEAS Bit Factory in collaboration with POLI.design, Politecnico di Milano’s School of Design and the Department of Design.

The project was an original proposal in the panorama of events which took place in Milan during the Salone Design Week 2017.

It started from Davide Crippa’s provocative idea – to create a temporary hostel inside an early 20th century factory building, and open it during the design week to people who “think and make” design.

The project approached design from “behind the scenes”, and visitors were able to enter into the life of the projects and the people thinking and making them.

Sleep with DESIGN – Design Hostel, was a place where designers’ daily lives mingled with exhibitions and showed how sharing can give shape to creativity.

For the entire duration of the Milan Design Week, the space became an unprecedented hybrid hostel, halfway between the concept of a temporary home and a living factory where you can visit the artists’ rooms and live their daily lives.

” The initiative is not limited to wanting to propose a new model of hospitality and sharing experiences with the public but also has a broader and longer-term goal: to raise with this first step the Bovisa area as a new pole of innovative activities during the Design Week.”  ……………….. David Crippa  ( Ghigos project co-ordinator )

” The happy idea of ​​the MakersHub and Ideas Bit Factory was to recreate a Design Week week of total immersion in design: an industrial lab where day-to-day design is materially thought and realized (even during the rest of the year) And at night she is also breathing and … dreaming! And of course shared.”…………………….. David Crippa

” Every guest designer of the facility could customize her timely accommodation with her productions, which have become an integral part of the collective exhibition, and spend the days with the visitors, as if there were no exhibitions there, not only the works, but also the artists themselves. ”   ……………………. David Crippa

The protagonists of the project were welcomed in a temporary hostel which came to life among the analog and digital factory machinery; every designer guest of the facility provided a design project which was displayed in a customized setting, designed as a sleeping area.

These projects constituted an exhibition that led visitors step by step, through the “design rooms”.

The aim was to select 40 designers or groups of designers who have proposed a project to be placed in a small space (about 8 square meters) inside the factory.

By day the space was an exhibition area, while at night it was animated by events and it would work as a hostel.

A creator’s room transformed into a test site for young designers who had the chance to set up the temporary hostel rooms, sharing the spaces for 10 days: the private spaces were merged with those open to the public, where a Conference and performance program

Every day, from 10am to 8pm, will be held the Industry 4.0 workshop, during which the catalog of the initiative with the old typographic machines will be realized, while 3D printing will be used for the production of stools.

On Wednesday 5th, Thursday 6th and Friday 7th starting from 5pm, the calendar offers three talk, respectively on: technology innovation, social innovation sustainability, the five startups selected by PoliHub.

The Hostel hosted MakersHub and IDEAS Bit Factory and was open daily from 10.30 am to 10.30 pm with free entrance, performances, installations, workshops, meetings and evening events.

Design Hostel Sleeping Rooms

The initiative project proposed a model of alternative hospitality within the Milan design week: anyone who could book a bed by Airbnb at a very cheap price, considering the general price increase that is taking place in the city during this period

The room of Prof. Bad Trip

One of the 40 rooms of the Design Hostel is dedicated to the visionary art of master Gianluca Lerici, known as Prof. Bad Trip, an eclectic artist who died prematurely in 2006.

The space is furnished with several works by the author who are little known to the general public and granted From the Tabularasa Tekè Gallery in Carrara: 13 pieces of furniture, 7 sculptures and 4 silkscreen prints.

The works come from the psychedelic, dreamlike and imaginative universe of the retrospective “A Saucerful of Colors”, which traces the entire repertoire of Lerici, among the most important names in the Italian punk and underground scene.

One of the works exhibited at the Design Hostel, the “Space Triptych”, will take life and be explored through virtual reality.

Andrea Giovannetti

Following the false line of “doing with little”, a contrast was created between the lightness of Andrea Giovannetti’s stone designs and the heavy weight of the raw material used.

And of course the designer slept in her own hostel production room

MilanoBAG of NineDesign, a wooden suitcase that has a structure that allows it to be transformed into a slatted bed and transported by air as a true baggage.

Hostel Guest Facilities

Mezzanine Meeting Room

On the mezzanine level of the hostel, a 100 sqm special space housed the show (1:13), the 13 chairs at Leonardo’s Last Supper

This project involved designers including CRTLZak, GumDesign, Alessandro Zambelli, Lorenzo Damiani, Sovrappensiero to look beyond what is painted in the famous work and to interpret, thanks to the support of Lissonian artisans – the so many symbolic sessions of the Apostles and Jesus.

The display also presented objects created by Alessandro Guerriero such as the Discipleship Attachment ( below )

Maker Marks Production

Along with the presence of typographic printing machines from the Lodi Museum of Print the exhibitions featured technological innovation and interactive approaches with visitors.

They used cliches created through Innovative 3D printing techniques and laser cutting.

Bit Factory – Ideas

Dusty Room – Timber laser cutting

Musical Popcorn

M @ is 2.0, a futuristic aftertaste installation that uses scattering and crackling popcorn to create unpredictable sound compositions – edited by Ghigos, Paolo Pasteris, Stefano Baldan

Square Sound

Square Sound, a play that, playing dice by the public, reads the numeric combinations that are released to mix in real-time the sounds of multiple instruments and thus give rise to ever-changing music

Solitairies Cell

Solitaries Cell, a robotic arm that plays with Chinese lady twittering the results in real time (edited by Teslab and Fanuc).

Canvas

Also featured by Paolo Deganello’s Canvas, an object inspired by the famous work by Caravaggio that blends the new logic of 3D printing and manual painting

Production Output – Shop Floor

Also the Be Fan Fan Collection, realized in digital fabrication by Ideas Bit Factory for “making breeze”.

To recall and venerate a topical issue such as the virtuous circular economy, Ghigos objects for recycled stones will also be present, a reality committed to regenerating lapide production waste to give them new life and new functions.

About Ghigos