A short summary of yesterday, today, looking for tomorrow...
YESTERDAY
In 2019, the opening of a DIFFERENT district is presented during Milan Design Week where regeneration lasts all year round; an area that offers products and synergies capable of generating project continuity and participation. A district of designers, where everything is inevitably everyday life, research and experimentation, a place to host high and low dialogue, suggesting a creative grammar that can arouse ever-changing emotions, a district of creative people, and more.
All this could not be called "Distretto Bovisa", "Zona Dergano", or simply by the name of the place "Lancetti", it had to be different and came up with the name "Repubblica del Design". An important name, perhaps even a little high-sounding, but the idea had to stand on a strong image, and so we thought of an imaginary state but real in fact, where we could think about the disciplines of design and creativity to build a new and shared vision. Giving free rein to the imagination in proposing itself, it decided to fly the flag as a real "state within a state" - perhaps just a state of mind - where the exchange value is IDEAS.
TODAY
After the two unusual years of COVID - 19 emergency, with hard work in the area aimed to answer emergency needs and the continuous search for design solutions devoted to sustainability – which saw a moment of presentation within "ROGuiltlessplastic", an event designed by Rossana Orlandi and Nicoletta Brugnoni to involve the communities of designers and creatives on the themes of recycling and reuse – with 2023 we are back to normal. Repubblica del Design reopens the district's locations with two new features: it expands its activities to the Affori district, and celebrates the use of "consulates", locations outside the area, with a special event inside San Vittore prison. A fair innovation in line with the spirit of Repubblica del Design, which has always been inspired by environmental, regeneration, social and energy saving issues.
BEYOND THE SALONE
Beyond the Salone and the Fuorisalone, during Milan Design Week, Repubblica del Design is presenting many initiatives that focus on the strong themes that have always distinguished it: #regeneration, #social, #energy, and it is doing it with the most important universities of Italian design, Università Iuav di Venezia, Politecnico di Milano, Accademia Rufa di Roma, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano and Scuola Politecnica Design di Milano.
These are unusual projects such as the one presented in San Vittore , which exhibits the results of a year's work of the inmates involved in the Circular Economy workshop created thanks to the collaboration of the design professors of Università Iuav di Venezia and the creatives of Repubblica del Design. A project that is displayed during Design Week, allowing lucky visitors to get in touch with one of the city's least visited places, but which does not end with the closure of the exhibition, silently continuing day after day.
Other projects represent social instances that originate from neighborhood committees and expand and consolidate by realizing not only temporary events or activities, but permanent outposts such as Design Differente (in the Affori area), a Hub dedicated to recycling and design issues at the service of citizens and associations and which recently became a university spin-off of Università Iuav di Venezia.
And moreover, projects spread throughout the four neighborhoods, such as "Da Cosa Nasce Cosa" program, which tries to regenerate public spaces with small interventions and objects donated to the community as a possible response to the needs of the area by the discipline of design.
A modus operandi that involves a multitude of stakeholders, schools, universities, public administrations, and companies, with an approach aimed at social and environmental sustainability, with effects and impacts that go beyond Design Week.
