The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 3

Sight Unseen is on the ground at the Milan Furniture Fair this week and we’ll be bringing you loads of coverage next week! But until our rounds here are done, we’ll be featuring quick hits from some of our favorite things that caught our eye. In the 5Vie district, in an old flat that’s been used for a couple of years as an exhibition space, we found the show Unsighted, curated by our friend Nicolas Bellevance-LeCompte of Carwan Gallery. For the brief he asked eight designers to create a collection not knowing who, what, or where it was bound for; our favorite of the collections was by a young designer named Roberto Sironi, who created Ruins, a series of benches, stools, mirrors and tables that juxtapose elements of the classical and industrial eras — columns and I-beams for example — and also mixes mirror-polished bronze with a contemporary material called Marmo Artificiale di Rima, which simulates the look of marble. The result is a series of what Sironi calls “contemporary ruins,” deconstructed parts of the past that will in fact be nearly indestructible in the future.
RUINS-Volubilis side-table_01 RUINS-Hubert mirror_01 RUINS-Hubert mirror detail RUINS-Palmyra bench01 RUINS-Palmyra bench_detail RUINS -Eiffel coffee-table 01 RUINS-Affresco sculpture