May 2025 Editor’s Letter
Entrata libera. When I began going to Milan’s Salone del Mobile, the city’s annual design extravaganza, some 25 years ago, you’d find that saying posted outside most showrooms and exhibitions. The phrase, literally translated as “free entrance,” is generally understood to mean “everyone is welcome.” And, indeed, those early years of attending the furniture fair were magical ones. There were the distinctive stores in town and the stunning booths at the fairgrounds—then located in the city center and much smaller and easier to navigate. You had to visit because the companies behind both were constantly innovating. There were also the exquisite installations and promising young designers you’d discover just wandering around the city.
I returned to the Salone in early April for the first time since the pandemic and found things had markedly changed. At the onset of Covid, and with the increasingly dire climate crisis, organizers of such events, and visitors to them, talked of the need to scale back the myriad annual furniture and design shows that occur across the globe. Is it really necessary for hundreds of thousands of people to descend upon a small city to see the latest chair? For that matter, do we really need any more new chair designs? And what about sustainability?
Strangely, and for me somewhat inexplicably, the Salone has exploded in size rather than contracted. Now if you want to visit one of those “must see” booths or showrooms, you better make an appointment well in advance. And you may still have to wait in line. Don’t have an appointment? If you’re not turned away, you’ll need to scan a QR code and register all your information to get in. Away from the fairgrounds—previously the only place that required a paid ticket—the most talked about off-site installations are now also charging money to get in. The point of attending Salone is to see, in person, product introductions from your favorite brands, but that’s become increasingly difficult to do with all the crowds and hoops to jump through. The Salone del Mobile has become a victim of its own success.
This month, thousands of visitors will arrive at another Italian locale, Venice—even smaller, and ever so fragile—for the vernissage of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition. The Biennale, too, is an opportunity for design-minded throngs to gather in a historically beautiful place that has unfortunately become too popular for its own good (a certain wedding for billionaire Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez that will take over the floating city for three days in June comes to mind).
The urge to go big and splashy is all around us, and often difficult to avoid. New York’s Frick Collection, featured on the cover and reopened last month, needed to grow but resisted an over-the-top move, or, more accurately, was forced to do so when a public outcry over expansion plans in 2014 that encroached on a beloved garden led the institution to rethink its addition. Rather than a new freestanding structure, it went with a scheme, by Selldorf Architects with Beyer Blinder Belle, that carefully added on to existing building fabric and made clever fixes within the exhibition spaces to maintain the intimate feel of the house museum. We look forward to welcoming our readers to a special event there in June, when we’ll discuss this considered approach with the architects. Details to follow, and, yes, entrata libera.
