2019 marks 10 years of VENTURA PROJECTS

Over these ten years the Ventura Projects format has resulted in many special design events in Milan as well as in other major design cities. At the foundation of Ventura Projects’ success is the ability to select outstanding design stories and the imaginative quality to match these with the right exhibition locations. It’s impossible to imagine Milan Design Week without a Ventura Projects event. In the past ten years these events have become the place to scout new talent and discover the future of design.

The format has often renewed itself, from experimental festival-like fairs in the Lambrate area to high-end installations around the central train station – always with the city of Milan in a leading role. The last two editions of Ventura Centrale were a must-see on the Design Week itinerary thanks to their outstanding exhibitions and were applauded for rejuvenating the area around the train tracks. All the more reason to extend its exhibition territory from 9 to 16 vaults this year. Ventura Centrale’s pioneering sister Ventura Futurehas found a new location. For its 2nd edition, Ventura Future’s exhibitors will gather in one of the most noted Design Week neighbourhoods: Tortona. Here, Ventura Future exhibits on 3,700m2 and is inaugurating a special partnership and collaboration with BASE Milano, the former Ansaldo industrial area which is today the new creative beating heart of the district. Both share an inexhaustible desire for development that makes the partnership a perfect match.

"Milan not only embodies design but the city lives and breathes its key principles. Milan is the perfect environment with its generous curiosity for the new and unknown and its loving affection for the aesthetics of the established." – Margriet Vollenberg, founder and art director of Ventura Projects

Over the last years there has been a detectable shift from the designer of objects to the designer of stories. Ventura Projects has always been at the forefront of this development. The Ventura Future visitors will bear witness to numerous projects that question present-day global affairs.

At Ventura Future, SOM tales of perfume (The Netherlands) will present a fragrant experience. The visitor can move through a composition of 100 wooden pieces that are infused with various components of pure botanical perfume. The visitor will be treated to a deconstructed personal scent expedition. Diederik Schneemann (The Netherlands) is equally interested in the concept of personal memory and specifically in the human desire to collect. For his presentation the collection Collection, Schneemann searches for discarded unique collections – from matchboxes to perfume bottles – that he transforms into new objects, telling stories of early memories and youth sentiments.

Atelier Boelhouwer

Another topic that will be thoroughly explored during this edition of Ventura Future is biodesign. With the support of the Embassy and the Consulate-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Milan and curated by Organisation in Design, the project Future (H)eart(H): 7 Dutch Design visions for a livable earth takes you into a world filled with concrete base flowers that help preserve the ‘big 5 of pollination’ (Matilde Boelhouwer); it proposes ways of using synthetic biology to create organs that can replace the animal products used in traditional Chinese medicine (Kuang-Yi Ku); and it shows biodegradable urns that give our loved ones back to nature in a responsible way (Nienke Hoogvliet). All seven projects will show the latest developments in bio and conscious design.

There’s no Milan Design Week without the presence of a selection of world-leading design academies. Ventura Future welcomes some new schools such as Institute of Industrial Design (Switzerland) and some frequent participants such as Central Saint Martins (UK), Royal College of Arts (UK), UMPRUM (Czech Republic) and University of Iowa 3D Design Program (US). The freedom that design students have to explore current topics never fails to excite. Design School Kolding (Denmark) asks the question in their exhibition: Where do we feel at home?

They will visualise the relationships between mobile personal objects and the ideas of home in the presentation A home is a home is a home.

Ventura Future at BASE Milano (2 entrances)

Via Tortona 54, 20144, Milan, Italy

Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milan,