The perfect balance between history and future

Cologne, Paris, Stockholm, Shanghai. Looking through the pages of the first issue of the year the mind travels around the globe making a few stops at some of the most interesting international venues in terms of design and attention to the world of design

The new products on display in these capitals, reflect the creative ferment that pervades them – from which one can well understand why they host the major trade events in the sector – and find out the common thread between these international cities: a drive for renewal that doesn’t forget its roots but rather draws inspiration from its historical heritage and identity.

Amazing how they are able to renew themselves, each with its own peculiarities, involving architecture and international design figures that, as painters, draw geometries and spaces assimilating as much as possible from the context and reinterpreting it, transformed, as a completely new work.

We see it in Cologne’s new Rheinauhafen district, which stands in the city’s old port and today is not only a new business center but also the headquarters of many companies in the creative industry; in Paris and Milan, destinations chosen by Foster+Partners for the new Apple Stores, drawing on the typical elements of Parisian and Milanese urbanity to define their concepts; we perceive it above all in Stockholm, a city undergoing an important architectural renewal, where experimentation goes hand in hand with the utmost attention to the ‘green’ approach and naturalistic background.
And even in Shanghai, which in comparison to other destinations in the Old Continent has different historicity, much more contemporary: here more than ever the context influences projects and approaches, having to deal – as in major international cities – with the phenomenon of urbanization that changes spaces and housing planning.

These are the cities, and the markets, to keep in mind, where the creative vivacity leaves wide space of insertion and possibility of development. These are the destinations from which we start to inaugurate the fair calendar and the publishing year.