Exhibitions and Festival
Ecocentrico: the IED project for Milan Design Week 2023
Date
17 April 2023 - 23 April 2023
Time
11:00 AM - 19:00 PM
Where
Ex Macello - Viale Molise 62, Milan - Italy
Fruition
In-person event
Notes
IED at Fuorisalone 2023, inside the Alcova space in the area of the former slaughterhouse of Porta Vittoria.
An open labs week to initiate an active reflection on urban and social regeneration, place identity and the relationship between man and nature.
It is the students from the European Institute of Design selected from the IED Group’s campuses in Italy, Spain and Brazil who are animating Ecocentrico, an informative space open to the public of Milano Design Week presented inside Alcova in the area of the ex Macello of Porta Vittoria where the future IED Campus will be built. Ecocentrico, the meaning of which is linked to the philosophical concept that nature has value in its totality rather than in each of its individual part, is a project developed from the partnership with Giacimenti Urbani, an association that deals with reducing the waste of resources and activating circular economy paths from below.
With Ecocentrico, IED brings together the utmost expression of its entire teaching approach: bringing together lecturers and students from different courses and from all the IED campuses, devising a week of workshops open to the local area with the aim of networking and creating cultural exchange, investigating the theme of how to create a new relationship with materiality, of which the installation itself is a tangible example, and designing aware of the impact we generate on the planet we inhabit, on people and on the other living species that inhabit it with us. The commitment from IED as a Benefit Society is precisely to operate responsibly, sustainably and transparently and thus to be accountable for a positive impact on society and the planet.
Ecocentrico is the place to experience all this: an informative space intended for doing rather than exhibiting through seven visual, sound and material workshops and interactive activities curated by students. The installation houses a large geodesic yurt - called a yurt show - which is an exhibition space for visual installations, the contents of which may be photographic, audio, video and multimedia, while a second yurt - called a yurt work - becomes a workshop space open to the public. The result is a tangible reflection on transitions, on the changing urban landscape and the historical memory of places, in particular on a place like the ex Macello of Porta Vittoria, on what it has been and the identity stratification that sets it apart.
Giacimenti Urbani, project partner, provided the IED students with some recycled materials, which were used to create the exhibition project. One of the geodesic yurts, the subject of the workshop Yurte - Once we were all nomads, will be built by the students together with the lecturers following the principle of reuse of materials that characterises the circularity concept of the entire project. For the construction of the yurts, the wooden strips used for the 2022 Fuorisalone will be employed: the aim is to keep the materials used as long as possible, so that they can express their full potential in use.
A WEEK OF OPEN LAB
The IED students will take centre stage, with lecturers and tutors, through seven workshops open to the public: 1/1000 - BANGS OF LIFE to be created with 3D printer moulds which are useful for producing earth balls, bearers of seeds and plants to be disseminated in the area of the former butchery. TAPESTRY - in collaboration with Giacimenti Urbani - for the construction of a paper tapestry, made up of the graphics produced and advanced during the Association's ten years of activity. The public will be able to participate in the stitching of the tapestry by punching, embroidering, drawing and attaching the pieces that it will be made up of. FANZINE to record, imprint and remember in time, everything that will happen during the days of the Ecocentrico project, following the diktats of old school fanzines and the DIY philosophy. FLUID SHAPES an exploration that starts from the observation of soap bubbles the shape of which is able to stimulate creativity in numerous disciplinary fields. In spite of their complexity and apparent disorder, the bubbles take on unexpectedly harmonious and regular shapes, of a complex beauty, to be analysed. RIDU-RIPA-RIU-RIC: short handbook to go down in flames a performance workshop to explore the urban landscape by paying attention to the material traces that run through it and finally LUZ-SOMBRA-COLOR to use light as a scenic component of space and to develop colour experiments, creating shadow games.
Finally, Ecocentrico also hosts the exhibition resulting from the workshop Studi visuali urbani (Urban visual studies) in which the students took part in the months leading up to Milan Design Week with the aim of mapping the area of the former Butchery, highlighting and relating the multiple aspects that define a disused area, which will soon be affected by a substantial redevelopment project. A series of individual artist installations will be on show, which, through different tools - sound, video, photography, drawing, graphics, fashion - and the use of objects collected in the area will define the exhibition route.
With contribution of Regione Lombardia
Milano Design Week 2023
Ecocentrico Project is part of IED Group activities promoted as an official partner of New European Bauhaus Initiative.
Take a look at the fanzine "Timless hooks" created by the student's during the event here.
