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YOUNG TURKS
Salone Internazionale del MOBILE

The annual furniture fair Salone Internazionale del Mobile ranks as the most important week on the design-world calendar. For confirmation of that fact, don't just look to the attendance levels that rival a small city's population, or the impossibility of booking a hotel room in host city Milan. Consider, too, that the biggest names in the business use Salone to unveil their showstoppers for the year, even if those products are still just prototypes. Once again Kartell will redefine the limits of plastic. Moroso will exhibit another stunning pagent of designs. British boutique manufacturer and relative newcomer Established & Sons will play the role of provocateur.

While these offerings are enough to drop jaws, Salone's best surprises are the hidden ones. Take Paul Loebach, for example (paulloebach.com). This New Yorker has been working quietly as a consultant and making his own designs since graduating from RISD in 2002. But at Salone Satellite, a tent devoted to Young Turks located on the edge of the Rho-Pero fairgrounds, he may have just gotten his big break with his newly introduced Space Case series: By experimenting three- and five-axis CNC mills, these pieces poetically reference lathe-turning, steam-bending, and other fabrication methods of historic furniture while adding the twist, sometimes literally, of contemporary attitude and technology. Down the aisle from Loebach Mario Minale and Kuniko Maeda paid homage to more recent design phenomena (minale-maeda.com). Their Chroma Key furniture pieces' fantastical, almost counterproductive shapes had the whiff of Memphis, and seemed to tap into a nascent resurgence of the movement. That presicence isn't bad for the Rotterdam-based duo's third collection of designs.

On the other side of the Satellite tent you could also find Enrico Fratesi and Stine Gam manning a booth (gamplusfratesi.com). Their designs have an endearing qualities that would almost be childlike were it not for the couple's self-possession. And despite that restraint, people are taking notice: Swedese has begun producing Gam plus Fratesi's Cartoon, a 2007 chair design looking something like a set of Mickey Mouse ears. At Satellite, Meduse stood out. These small coffee tables evoked jellyfish without succumbing to literalness.

The upstart spirit of the Salone Satellite also infiltrated the Zona Tortona, a several-square-block expanse near center-city Milan where new wares were displayed in any studio, gallery, storefront, or warehouse space available. Bram Boo was in the zone-metaphorically, too (bramboo.be). The Belgian designer confidently embraced absurdity, overloading his Paparazzi chair with storage compartments or making Lazy desk appear as if it could gallop away.

Another celebrity-to-be showed his designer peers how to infiltrate the corporate ranks. Shay Alkalay graduated from the Royal College of Art as recently as 2006, and this year two of the most intriguing designs at Salone del Mobile were the products of his imagination. Established & Sons celebrated Alkalay's Stack, a seemingly precarious tower of oversize multicolored drawers, by placing it as the centerpiece of its installation (establishedandsons.com). And the hinge mechanism of Pivot, for Arco, makes this cabinet a dynamic piece of wall art that, equally important, allows you to open more than one drawer at a time (arco.nl).

While companies embraced youth, others were young themselves, such as the newly launched Meta (madebymeta.com). Born from the minds of two antiques dealers, Meta pairs antiques-era artisans with hot designers like Asymptote, Barber Osgerby, and Wales and Wales-who were responsible for, respectively, the Ivo table, Cupola glass reading table, and Glissade desk pictured here. Accolades also go to Poltrona Frau (poltronafrau.com). The renowned manufacturer is no newborn but it got a veritable facelift this year, commissioning big names like Sami Hayek to create the hidden-compartment Amerigo storage unit and Patrick Norguet to devise the sleek-yet-warm Arché table. This storied maker, like the newcomers who emulate it, clearly is staking a claim on the future. i4