Too big. Too frequent. Too spread-out. Those are some of the complaints heard again and again about Milan's over-the-top furniture fair, which consumes Italy's second-largest city for one week every April. Yet design aficionados keep flocking to the annual event in ever-larger numbers. The 53rd edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile attracted more than 357,000 visitors, up 13 percent from last year.
While new and unexpected exhibition venues continue to crop up throughout the city, the fairgrounds in the northwestern suburb of Rho seem to finally be taking back some of the spotlight from those fringe events. British designer Tom Dixon exhibited there for the first time this year. “I decided it is more radical to be conventional,” Dixon said. For years, his unique presentations—sometimes incorporating pop-up restaurants—anchored the once-important Tortona district. More recently, he became a mainstay at the city's Museum of Science and Technology, last year transforming spaces throughout the museum into a temporary design hub past which groups of schoolchildren walked to visit the permanent collection. “The fair became more about entertainment than commerce,” Dixon explains. “I've been coming to Milan for 25 years, and entertaining people for most of that time, but now I'll do some commerce.”
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