One thing for your mind
If you only have time for one thing, make sure it’s Double Vision, a joint installation between BLOND and Harry’s, respectively a design studio based in London and a company manufacturing grooming and shaving products. The installation, held in the spaces of Falegnameria Cavalloni in Via Palermo 8 (Brera Design District) showcases a traditional design workflow on one side, with your user journey maps and your sketches and moodboards and everything you’d expect.
On the other side, this workflow is challenged and enhanced by an AI-supported approach, from fleshing out your ChatGPT prompt, to finding ways to squeeze valid ideas out of tools like Midjourney, to assembling their own rapid iteration tool.
Also, you might learn what the heck a facial steamer is, as I did.
One thing for your heart
If you only have time for one thing, make sure it’s this year’s Interni Cre-Ation in Brera’s Botanical Gardens: It Means Peace by Marco Balich , Creative Director and Executive Producer of something like 16 Olympic Ceremonies, and War Flags by world-class designer Philippe Starck (not to be confused with Tony). You’ll start the experience, as you’re queuing, by hearing sounds like drums, and then you’ll realize they’re bombs and machine guns as you enter the place through a dark wooden tunnel, resembling a WW2 trench. “Peace is a choice” is the writing that will welcome you at the end of the entrance tunnel. So it’s clear what we’re talking about.
On the other side of the wooden wall, painted black, you’ll be able to write your thoughts with chalk, and you’ll see the different angles people are taking on the subject, from Palestine to nature to people quoting the famous Latin motto: “if you want peace, prepare for war”. I wanted to point out that it only worked whenever the Romans managed to be the biggest bullies around, and it failed flat whenever somebody else decided they wouldn’t have it anymore. The Roman Empire did not experience a period entirely free from military campaigns or warfare. Never. The so-called Pax Romana (27 BCE–180 CE) refers to internal stability; it meant no civil war, but military activity persisted, whether it was expansions, conquests, and suppression of revolts in regions such as Germania, Dacia, Hispania, and North Africa. If you dream of a period like that, I personally don’t.
The actual installation is a group of neon lights with the word “peace” in different languages.
In the second installation, Philippe Starck dressed in mourning flags of Countries from around the world and designed some new ones. They’re waving in the religious silence of the garden, and you have the distinct impression, after the shock of the tunnel, that nobody’s left alive.
Not for the faint of heart.
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