Place Setting

Leave the shiny silver spoons to stiff upper-crust functions — any dinner party served with Natalia Criado’s plated brass cutlery seems like it would be far more fun to attend. In the kitchen of Villa Borsani (the more intimate of Alcova’s two Milan Design Week group exhibition venues, both former residences in the city’s Varedo area), visitors swooned over a selection of the Colombia-born, Italy-based designer’s geometric cutlery and serving utensils, which walk the line between functional tableware and elegant jewellery. While the designs reintroduce a certain sense of ceremony to mealtimes, their unexpected play of proportions feels more fanciful than formal. Rather than high-society tea, the collection is rooted in global craft traditions: Inspired by forms found in pre-Columbian civilizations, the made-in-Italy tableware engages the time-honoured skills of today’s artisans. With dainty, threaded handles that culminate in large quartz capstones, the pieces become delightful treasures — hence the collection’s name: Gems at Home.

Dinner at the End of the World

While doomsday preppers are busy stocking underground bunkers, the subterranean backup plan doesn’t really work in
Venice. So, where to move once the city is submerged? Take the show on the road. That was the solution explored — semiseriously, at least — by interior architecture masters students at HEAD Genève (the Geneva University of Art and Design), who staged a spectacular post-Anthropocene vignette as part of Alcova’s exhibition at Villa Bagatti Valsecchi. Equal parts design exercise and theatrical performance, the showing imagined a world ravaged by the elements and a nomadic society in stiff competition for safe, habitable land — all kicked off by the 2084 sinking of Venice.

As alarming as that sounds, the camp of surviving nomads (played by real people dressed in brightly coloured athleticwear) still seemed relatively well-adjusted. Inside one of their tents (draped in a wide circus stripe fabric), two of them faced off in a chess match. As for food? An accordion-like aluminum cart mounted on bicycle wheels unfolded to create a group table set with plates and several oranges. (Apparently those trees withstood the floods.) On the other hand, a second aluminum sheet–wrapped structure — a capsule-like cabinet stocked with a full dish set — was noted to be a trap planted by an enemy group. A cautionary tale of impending climate doom,
the installation was also a tribute to the perseverance of the human spirit. No matter how bad things had turned, people still managed to find a dining table to gather around.