This article is part of our special design report in the preview of the Milan design week.
Salone del Mobile, the International Furniture Fair in Milan, opens on Tuesday with the comfort of a steady heartbeat.
The six -day event, which is anchored by the festival as a Milan Design Week, has been an annual ritual with a few interruptions since 1961. This year, however, it is also a time of the palpitation of uncertainty, since the tense economies in Europe, the crisis of the property sector in China and the tariffs imposed by the Trump government threaten this strongly networked industry.
“It's a complicated moment,” said Maria Porro, the President of Salone del Mobile. France and Germany, the leading buyers of Italian furniture, have withdrawn while the American market has strengthened.
According to the Salone annual report in 2024, the American imports of Italian wood and furnishing sector products were 2.13 billion euros (2.3 billion US dollars) in 2023, which are only second before France and just before Germany.
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States remain reliable customers due to a boom in real estate development in the region and the lack of local furniture producers, said Ms. Porro.
In the world, individual consumers have made fewer purchases, added. The armed forces that drive furniture sales are office and residential buildings, hotels and institutions. However, the long timeline of large architectural projects offers potential for cancellation contracts if companies or investors have difficulties.
If there is discomfort, it will probably not be obvious if the salon presents its new offers in the exhibition center in RHO, a city northwest of the city center. Last year, the fair received 371,000 visitors and gave it a frenetic energy and long lines. (Good luck when buying a Panini at lunchtime.) Large crowds are expected again.
The two -year Euroluce lighting exhibition will return to the exhibition center, as well as trading shows dedicated to the establishment of accessories and the workplace. And talent hunters will flock to Salononeseatellite again, a shop window for designers under the age of 35.
The fair also commissioned installations by the French interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon, the Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorentino, the British artist and stage designer ES Devlin (in the Milan's Brera District) and the American theater artist and director Robert Wilson (in the medieval Sforza Castle).
And then there are hundreds of Fuorisalon activities, which means the official event “outside”.
In Milan and about half an hour north to the city of Varedo (again the annual Alcova design show), artists, manufacturers, retailers and furniture lovers will record the glamor and ingenuity of newly slipped artifacts.
You can thank the salon for the expression of the aesthetic brilliance in the Milan Design Week, noted Ms. Porro.
“The role of Salone is to create a connected platform for companies,” she said.
“But the task is also to be this ecosystem that brings almost 400,000 people to Milano. It is the big attractor.”