Salone del Mobile 2019

On April 8th to 12th 2019, the event of the Milano Design Week with the theme of “Light, Space, Colour”, hosted by Uozu Lighting was successfully completed. The one-week exhibition and forum event was designed to present the audience an artistic, professional, innovative visual sensory experience, and feel the unique charm of Italian design and cross-border design.

As we all know, the essence of architecture is space, the essence of space is light, and the perfect type of artistic lighting is mainly the effect of grasping the relationship between shape and color. The light and shadow produced by illumination have both shape and color, which makes the effect become almost tangible. But how is it possible to make space come alive with colour and light?

In order to discuss this topic together, on April 10th we were honored to invite the famous Japanese lighting designer Mr. Kaoru Mende and two professors from the Polytechnic University of Milan, Arturo Dell'Acqua Bellavitis and Vittorio Linfante, to the event focused on the theme "Enlightening retail experiences: the new frontiers of interior design for commercial spaces". The event brought together designers from different fields to form a strong dialogue and discuss the innovation and application of light and colour for the interiors of commercial spaces, as well as the future development trends of the lighting industry. Professionals from different countries and regions gathered to listen to the insights of experts and professors on the topic.

It is worth mentioning that the theme of the event of April 10th echoes the concept of the exhibition hall of UOZU, also focused on retail design. In the UOZU showroom, the guests saw UOZU's latest product "Raggio", tailored for commercial retail spaces. This product uses high-performance integrated electrical track connectors to make the lamps more stable while maintaining product performance. Compact and with miniaturized components, this product has high color rendering and effectively eliminates the influence of the secondary spot; it succeeds in making the light more uniform and eliminates the glow effect, obtaining an excellent light and shadow interaction.

The most high-end fashion brands, such as Prada, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Gucci, have demonstrated how an iconic architecture and facade design can be an extremely powerful tool to make their flagship stores stand out and be remembered, as well as to transmit the brand identity and design concepts in a brilliant way. That’s why the first speech by Mr. Mende was focused on architecture and lighting design, especially the illumination of the exteriors of a building which makes it become a city landmark. Mr. Mende presented a selection of the most iconic projects of his studio, most of which are situated in Japan and are done for excellent architecture practices and architects (such as Tadao Ando).

The audience was very quiet and attentive as the designer talked about the design concepts between some of his most iconic works and how he has managed to declinate light in so many different ways and to treat it and manage it skillful as if it was a material. The result of this, are buildings that appear absolutely stunning and other-wordly, inspiring and capturing the audience. His concept of architecture and lighting design seems, in fact, based on a spatiality which evokes an interior world, exposing the “soul” of a building through the use of mainly glass and light.

Prof. Arturo Dell’Acqua Bellavitis, besides being a famous and accomplished architect and an important figure in Milan Polytechnic University, is also specialized in the fields of fashion and lifestyle, and is therefore very conscious of the degree of innovation required from high-end brands in the 21st century. In his talk, he did an overview of the current state of retail design and presented some important cases related to Italian fashion brands, showing how interior design and the incorporation of lighting design have managed to make a strong statement and have characterized differently the flagship stores of brands in different locations, making the shopping experience unique.

Lapis Bureau, Product, Interior, Architecture and Landscape Design company based in Shenzhen and designing for market leading companies, which is work for Asian brands and clients with western standards or for European and American clients that have their businesses, offices or R&D in China. They are one of Tencent's three largest design suppliers, and have maintained long-term and stable cooperation with Vanke Group, Baolong real estate and Shenzhen urban construction. They design templet, park planning and landscape design for them. The team counts almost 20 people among Designers, It is international and multicultural. At the same time, it is also one of the founding cooperation units of the Italy Design Association. It imports a large number of design talents and design cases for China's design market every year.

Prof. Vittorio Linfante’s speech was focused on the most innovative and iconic of Italian fashion houses and the declinations of their brand image into retail design. He started talking about the concept of brand and why it needs to be translated coherently into each of the marketing collaterals as well as all the physical spaces connected to the brand. The most insightful part came in the second part of his presentation: the declinations of the light experience in the retail space. He analyzed: "Light as pure technical element", "Light as sign", "Light as color", "Light as surface design(er)", "Light as space design(er)", "Light as architectural design(er), "Light as museum-like effect" and "Light as theatrical-like effect", revealing very interesting and innovative projects of retail design realized by different luxury brands.