Dezeen promotion: the first design week aimed exclusively at children will be held during Milan's Salone del Mobile from 14 to 19 April.
Occupying a large portion of the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia, the Kids Design Week endeavours to provide an interactive way for children to be involved with the main festival.
Organisers Actant Visuelle and Uovokids, along with the museum, hope that visitors both young and old will be encouraged to engage with devised experiences and objects.
Amongst the exhibitors is PCM, a Spanish product design studio that will be presenting the Policosmos pop-up collection by Karen Maza Mazadro.
Designed for children, the cardboard arctic and tropical scenes are intended to be used in conjunction with the Policosmos animals.
The products are brightly coloured and simple in construction, aiming to exercise a child's imagination by creating open-ended game scenarios.
PCM will also present the Combined Shapes Card Game by Brynjar Sigurðarson, a simple match-up game where corresponding cards fit together to reveal the full shape.
Axel Schindlbeck's prototype for a digital clock intended to help children learn in a playful and natural way will also be on show.
The clock, named Albert, presents different levels of mathematical equations that must be solved in order to read the time.
The One Size Fits All exhibition will play host to a collection of playful and colourful objects. Although not strictly designed for children, the items are chosen to be engaging with young visitors.
"The exhibition travels through the last few years of great design, searching for objects which are capable of triggering ageless thoughts and actions," said the organisers.
Pieces exploring authorship, production and distribution by the Dutch label SANKS, based in Krux Amsterdam, will also be presented at the festival..
"SANKS focuses on small size products, which correspond to three different creative gestures, in three different scales of production, one-off pieces coming from an experimental process, try-outs, prototypes and customised pieces, limited series between 10 and 1000 and a permanent collection; produced every season according to demand," the organisers said.
Dezeen is media partner with Kids Design Week, which will take place at Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia from 14 to 19 April.
Read on for more information from the organisers:
Kids Design Week does not believe in keeping the adult and child perspectives separate; it strives to realise fruitful hybridisations between the two. For this reason, it has devised experiences which run in parallel with the exhibition of quality projects designed for children. The cultural objective is pursued, on the one hand, by showcasing some of the most fascinating products on the market; on the other hand, by adopting an alternative didactic stance which questions from within the very idea of conceiving an event exclusively for children.
There's a special value in what aims to be effectively shaped around the littlest of people, who, whilst they lack experience, are also prone to surprising and personal ways of discovering the world. On the one hand, a child-like approach, free of the strict perceptive grids which are typical of the adult way of looking at things, can be an exciting starting point for designers.
On the other hand, designing for children means taking up a challenge, fighting standardisation, creating objects which encourage (rather than hinder) the spontaneous heterogeneity of approaches of the youngest. Kids Design Week aims to celebrate those who have taken up this challenge, gathering together and promoting an exchange among many of those who, in different parts of the world and in different ways, think it is important to trace sensible lines around the first, uncertain but precious steps of the littlest ones.
In a venue that could not be more apt, among old sailing ships, historical steam engines and cruise ships, under aircraft wings and next to legendary boats of the likes of Luna Rossa, KDW takes place in a playful and fun way in the space of Milan’s Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia. Big firms and new enterprises who have recently and bravely joined this segment of the market, designers and projects devised ad hoc: they will all share this new way of conceiving the world's most important design week, contributing to a rich network of exhibits. Their shared objective is to address directly a segment of the public which had never been involved in such a comprehensive and extensive way. Almost 1000 square metres are available for the exhibition, which has both commercial and cultural value. The set-up is simple and interactive, giving prominence to the exhibitors and inviting visitors to engage and interact with the objects.
During the Kids Design Week, visitors will have the opportunity to take part in workshops devised by Sanks, a new Dutch design label based at KruxAmsterdam; jump on the deliberately out-of-proportion furniture items by Lago; create sculptures with Stick-lets; race with Bugaboo strollers; or get lost in a city made of Tukluk triangles. And much more.
Making culture for Kids Design Week means, on the one hand, exhibiting and promoting the best products available on the market, and on the other hand, offering an experience which deviates a little from the format of a trade fair or a museum - which makes it all the more precious.Taking part in KDW are, amongst other exhibitors: Kalon Studio, Dearkids, PCM DESIGN, Affinità Moderne, My Prototype, afilii – design fit for kids, L&Z, Richard Lampert, Moluk, Parsprototo, Pliet, Charlie Crane, Giulio Iacchetti, Paolo Ulian, Matteo Ragni, Axel Schindlbeck, Francois Dumas, Erasmus Scherjon, Ghero Asmut, Alejandro Ceron, Zaven, Francesca Lanzavecchia, Zanellato/Bortotto, Matteo Zorzenoni.
Furthermore, within the context of KDW, the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia will offer a workshop in its Tinkering Zone for designers and professionals on toys and new open source technologies, during which it will be possible to experiment with new ways of designing objects and producing new ideas.
KDW is the result of a collaboration between the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia, Uovokids and Actant Visuelle.
It is supported by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in Milan and benefits from technical sponsorship from Jannelli&Volpi. With the contribution of Regione Lombardia and Unioncamere Lombardia.