LAKE COMO.- For its second edition, Lake Como Design Fair will once again push the boundaries between fair and exhibition by bringing together design and architecture lovers through a unique event.

Lake Como Design Fair returns for its second edition on September 20-22, 2019, and will occupy two sites. A curated selection of design will be presented at Teatro Sociale Como and a new section - entirely dedicated to architecture - will be held at Palazzo del Broletto. This year the fair will focus on colour. Designers and architects are encouraged to contribute to a reflection and investigation on the subject of colour with and through their submitted projects.

On one hand Design
The Teatro Sociale Como opens its doors to the public on the occasion of Lake Como Design Fair, acting as its scene setting and continuing within the architectural dialogue that is enacted outside, where rationalist buildings such as the ex Casa del Fascio interacts with the adjacent cathedral and the theatre itself.

“One sits more comfortably on a colour that one likes”, Verner Panton.

The curatorial aim for the design section is to immerge the Ridotto rooms of Teatro Sociale Como into the chromatic gradations of the most contemporary design projects. The fair will showcase around 150 works highlighting new complementarities, fresh insights and autonomous creative processes.

By focusing on colour, the fair will engage visitors in a kind of permanent firework display and enable them to share the positivity and optimism of the selected projects. Four intriguing environments will be set up, comprising outdoor furniture, lighting, textile installations and a wide range of furniture and objects of many different scales.

The fair will not only present the evocative power of colour and its incursions into the design world, but will also reflect the freedom of taste and aesthetics that are typical of our present times.

On the other hand Architecture
On the occasion of its second edition, Lake Como Design Fair will enlarge its horizon to the domain of architecture. It is therewith attempting to reach out to those architects who are not solely focused on the briefs of their clients, but who have the habit to give free rein to their ideas through the production of artifacts that reflect their practice.

As opposed to the design section of the fair, architects are not expected to deliver pure design objects, but also items that have been created before, during or after the creative process accompanying their built, unbuilt or utopian projects. Besides sketches, photographs or models, we invite architects to also consider "accidental masterpieces," which serendipity (or not) may have generated as a collateral of their designs: a mock-up, a resin fragment, a foam sculpture, an abstract totem. Further, we also look forward receiving submissions by architecture photographers or proposals of such work by the authors of the portrayed objects. The depiction of architecture and its materiality is as much a colour-giver as the process of its creation.

The display of the architectural objects in the over 250 m2 of space of the Palazzo del Broletto will reflect a curatorial study of the submitted works. A 15 metre long diagonal wall, that divides the space into two halves, will articulate around itself a wide range of statement pieces on the fair's theme. A Wunderkammer dedicated to colour, that needs not necessarily to be "colourful" but that will increase awareness of the "original" colour of the objects, ultimately defined by their materiality.

Each work on display will be available for purchase. A publication and a guide distributed at the fair’s entrance will provide detailed information about the contents of the exhibition.