Salone 2024: the new layout between neuroscience and AI

Concept redesign routes Salone del Mobile.Milano - Ph. Cristian Catania, Lombardini22

The redesign of the 62nd edition starts with listening. Visitors, exhibiting companies and stakeholders are at the heart of the project, synergically involved to identify perceptions, desires and needs

Word of the day: listening. The Salone del Mobile.Milano is in continual evolution and metamorphosis, a necessary condition for retaining its primacy in the furnishing and design sector at international level, and as the event heralding the changes the industry and society are going through. Listening to visitors and exhibiting companies is an integral part of the process of understanding perceptions, desires and needs. It is with this in mind that the path towards the 62nd edition continues, confirming a collaboration with the Department and School of Design at Milan’s Polytechnic University for setting up a permanent observatory to analyse the Salone del Mobile ecosystem and its impact on the community in terms of sustainability, inclusion, circularity, growth and skills transfer.

President Maria Porro had this to say: “The Salone has always been the spark that has lit the touchpaper for the many independent initiatives that breathe life into this particular week. We believe that, in order to play a social and institutional role that will enable the trade fair to generate positive value for the benefit of the city and the community, it needs to be able to connect with the institutions, the stakeholders and all the actors involved. With this in mind, we were keen to explore the possibility of involving the Department and the School of Design at Milan Polytechnic University in investigating the cultural-social-economic nature of the Salone del Mobile/Design Week scientifically, authoritatively and super partes. Our common goal is the definition of a Permanent Observatory capable of developing a system for pinpointing, observing and interpreting what is happening in the city during that particular period and promoting actions that will guarantee greater sustainability, inclusion and circularity of the event as a whole. When it comes to the next edition: 87% of visitors described the Euroluce experience as memorable. This result reinforces the evolution project for the Salone del Mobile format, which will take in all the pavilions. Supported by neuroscience and by listening to all the protagonists, the 2024 project will be centred around the top companies within the sector, with a focus on Bathrooms and Kitchens.”

salonemilano, lombardini22 — Concept redesign routes Salone del Mobile.Milano - Ph. Cristian Catania, Lombardini22

The re-design of the edition scheduled for 16th to 21st April 2024 puts the human experience at the centre, which is why the Salone decided to put its faith in neuroscience. By applying its principles, Lombardini22, a leading group on the Italian architecture and engineering scene, analysed the emotional and unconscious behaviour of the people who walk through and man the pavilions and stands, in order to design experiences based on real behaviours and new emotional, experiential and relational engagements designed to foster quality events and contacts.

“The Salone del Mobile will be the first trade fair to use neuroscience as a tool for detecting visitor satisfaction levels and improving the visitor experience inside the pavilions by optimising the pathways,” said Andrea Vaiani, Exhibitions Director of the Salone del Mobile.Milano.

The result is an unprecedented new project for the layout of EuroCucina, with FTK, Technology For the Kitchen integrated into its spaces, and the International Bathroom Exhibition, with adjacent, linked pavilions for the first time, thus optimising time and space, making visits fuller and more efficient, ensuring equal accessibility and visibility to all the exhibitors. Reworking the layout in a concentric fashion with the exhibiting companies located on both sides of a loop-shaped boulevard, will ensure access to all the stands by covering half the distance than with the traditional set-up.

There will be two large installations: one in the International Bathroom Exhibition spaces, figuring a scenic stage on which data, research and innovation related to the challenges of safeguarding the planet and its resources will converge; the other, in the Furniture pavilions, representing an evocative mise-en-scene of spaces and furnishings sparked by the extraordinary vision of an internationally renowned filmmaker in pavilions 5 and 7, which will be the first at the Salone del Mobile to adopt the new mesh structure, a new departure from the traditional cardo and decumanus layout. For those visiting EuroCucina, there will be numerous events and experiences related to Food Design to look forward to. Lastly, amongst other new departures, SaloneSatellite will mark its 25th anniversary with a special edition in Pavilions 5 and 7 at the fairgrounds, and a large exhibition in the city at Triennale Milano, from 16th to 28th April 2024.

“Lombardini22 is honoured by the confirmation of its partnership with the Salone del Mobile. This trust is fuelled by a harmony, an important assonance: the fundamental value that we both ascribe to listening and the desire to put the needs of our interlocutors first,” explained Cristian Catania, Lombardini22 architect and Reinventing Fair project director. “Following on from the positive Euroluce 2023 experience, we are taking things further, putting ourselves on the line with a further step built on rigour, transparency, courage and experimentation. The challenge is to be able to provide an increasingly high quality, memorable and natural visitor experience, as well as guaranteeing the right level of exhibitor visibility, by means of a new urban layout that will be different to Euroluce because the Kitchen and Bathroom offering is different.”

On the role of innovation, Catania went on to say: “Technology – and I’m talking about neuroscientific experiments and the application of flow studies – helps us tune in even better to people and their innermost needs, even those they are unaware of. Our thinking and design method are verified by the impartiality of technical tools, which are combined with our expertise, in particular in the fields of retail, urban planning, flow studies and neuroscience to make the space an attractive and enabling factor.”

Technology is therefore a tool at the service of man: the new Salone del Mobile.Milano communication campaign, greater detail of which will be forthcoming over the coming months, was devised and produced by Publicis Groupe with the scientific collaboration of Paolo Ciuccarelli, professor of design and founder of the DensityDesign Lab at Milan Polytechnic University and the Center of Design at Boston’s Northeastern University. For the key visuals, the agency has harnessed generative Artificial Intelligence in order to understand, analyse and visualise the stories, relationships and emotions that the trade fair brings out throughout the year.