Wallpaper* returns to Milan Design Week with a new exhibition at Triennale

The Wallpaper* Class of ’24 will see our return to Milan Design Week with a new exhibition showcasing work by emerging talent in furniture and product design. Running alongside Salone del Mobile 2024 (16 – 21 April), our exhibition will be staged across the Triennale's first-floor curve, celebrating the bright future of design and its players. 

Wallpaper* Class of ’24 at Triennale

'Wallpaper* Class of ’24 is a project that fosters our ongoing commitment to emerging designers, creating a platform where a diverse range of backgrounds and disciplines can debut on a global stage,' says Sarah Douglas, Wallpaper* Editor-in-Chief. 'Building on Wallpaper's role as a champion of innovation and emerging talent, we have curated a showcase of new designers that most excite us right now, to connect them with a network of makers and brands.'

Among the exhibition's cohort is Austrian-Japanese Rio Kobayashi, who draws from his mixed heritage and training to create imaginative furniture designs, as well as Canadian Lauren Goodman, whose work is based on transforming salvaged materials into inspired furniture designs, and Korea's Seongil Choi, whose experimental approach is based on material, form and colour. 

Martinique-based Ibyane (formed of Tania Doumbe Fines and Élodie Dérond) is a design studio whose projects are about 'being in conversation and exchanging ideas, views on the world, on beauty and on design', while Andu Masebo's experimental furniture designs are informed by repurposed found materials (including an entire red Alfa Romeo). 

Working with American Hardwood

Sharing our values of supporting emerging talent is AHEC (American Hardwood Export Council), which was most recently our partner for Discovered, a 2021 exhibition at London's Design Museum featuring works in wood by designers who were inspired by pandemic isolation. 

For Class of ’24, AHEC worked with Wallpaper* to select two designers from the exhibition's roster, working with them to create new work produced by London-based furniture maker Jan Hendzel. AHEC collaborated with designer Giles Tettey Nartey and Eleanor Hill of architecture studio Parti, who experimented with the possibilities of American maple. 

Inspired by his Ghanaian heritage, Nartey presents 'Communion', taking this commission as an opportunity to explore culture, culinary tradition, and the rituals of domestic life in Ghana. His large-scale sculptural piece is a table conceived for the making of fufu – a West African food made by pounding cassava into a dough, a mundane act that becomes a communal performance where everyone comes together in the shared experience of making food.

Parti, meanwhile, created the 'Pirouette' collection, a furniture range that captures a sense of movement to convey the joyful feeling of spinning around. The design is based on a simplified motif referencing draped fabric. 'Hand sculpting fabric out of heavy materials is something we’ve seen throughout history’, says Hill. ‘Howevever, at Parti we are very interested in utilising new technologies and processes, and pushing them to the limit to create feasibly manufactured products. As a result, the making process is integral to the design, informing its boundaries’

'We take immense joy in collaborating with creatives due to the unique opportunities it offers us as an organisation representing both an industry and a precious natural resource,' says David Venables, AHEC's European Director. 'Over the past two decades, we've cultivated fruitful collaborations with architects and designers to showcase the diverse possibilities of the sustainable timbers we represent.'

Wallpaper* Class of ’24 is on view during Salone del Mobile, from 16-21 April 2024

Triennale Milano
Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6
20121 Milano

americanhardwood.org