Sorry, it's not about furniture
What David Gianotten proposed in Milan
An open stage in the middle of Pavilion 14, surrounded by the stands of Salone exhibitors, with rows of architects, manufacturers and specifiers who had cleared their schedules for the next few minutes. Drafting Futures Arena, Fiera Milano, 22 April. Salone president Maria Porro (also marketing and communications director at the family-run furniture brand Porro) opened the afternoon with a telling admission. A year ago, she said, the Salone had begun thinking about establishing a new pavilion dedicated exclusively to contract projects. From the outset, however, "we understood that it was not possible to apply the rules with which we designed the Salone itself". Contract, she said, is such a different field that it has to be rethought. Hence, said Porro, the call to OMA – because of "the different layers this practice embraces".
That is not the usual register of a fair president speaking about her own format. Anyone who concedes that the in-house rules don't quite fit a particular market segment is, between the lines, also conceding that the business model of the past sixty years has its limits. Through precisely this open door stepped David Gianotten – OMA partner, architect, Dutchman with a Hong Kong track record.
Gianotten spent the next 25 minutes explaining to a furniture-fair industry that contract is not what it usually takes it to be. Contract, he said, is not a contract in the legal sense, but a description of how an industrial and market ecosystem actually functions. What sits at the centre is not the product but the entire environment a client commissions. The point, which Gianotten varied several times: clients are increasingly no longer interested in the object, but in the system behind it. Not in the moment of sale, but in the long-term engagement of all parties involved – client, designer, manufacturer, operator – all the way through to reuse at the end of the lifecycle.
What clients then actually purchase, Gianotten listed with the dryness of a consultant who has mastered the consultancy business: compliance, lifecycle performance, logistics, coordination, guarantees, timing, accountability. What does not appear on the list is beauty. At a furniture fair, that is a statement. "The outcome of a contract is not necessarily an object," said Gianotten, "but this overall environment that clients want to shape." Translation: whoever in the industry is still waiting for the next sofa, the next table, the next chair to shift the logic of the market is missing what clients have been buying for years – the transfer of risk.
That none of this is a passing trend Gianotten illustrated with a historical sweep the room had hardly expected. Even in the Roman Empire, collective buildings were commissioned along these lines, with responsibility for supply, use and after-use. Industrialisation made the model scalable. The Titanic, Gianotten remarked in passing, was one of the first modern one-stop-shop projects. After the world wars, the build-out of the great institutions – administrations, universities, corporate headquarters – made contract the rule. Today, the fragmentation of mixed-use buildings is added to the picture, along with the digital layer and continuous adaptation across decades. In the nautical world, Gianotten said, 95 per cent of all boats already run under contract conditions. A figure that was registered in the room with the audible attentiveness typical of a furniture fair.
OMA itself runs this logic in its own projects: the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, the Potato Head resort in Bali, the conversion of the army barracks at Singapore's Dempsey Hill, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is now being continuously adapted, in its operating phase, to each new government. The common thread: a single line of responsibility running over years, sometimes decades. What architects experience as liberation, because they are allowed to shape complexity, is for manufacturers an invitation to structural self-examination – whether their own organisation can carry that arc at all.
From this follows what was actually astonishing about Gianotten's lecture: his definition of what Salone 2027 is supposed to be. Not a trade fair, because trade fairs show objects and capabilities, not conversations. Not an exhibition, because exhibitions revolve around fixed products, which here do not yet exist. Rather, said Gianotten, something closer to an exchange. A bursa, in his choice of word – a place where parties keep exchanging, where expertise is matched, deals are made, and from there the next step of the project begins. Different types of companies have to be sorted: the large ones that can absorb risk, plus the smaller, innovative ones that supply into them. Add to that clients, operators, users. On this sorting process, said Gianotten, the Curatorial Master Plan is built.
Anyone who heard the message heard a second one with it. A fair that understands itself as an exchange does not need stand square metres as its main currency. What counts is the density of contact between actors who otherwise do not share a room. Whether Milan will actually deliver on that within twelve months is the open question. That Maria Porro and OMA have framed the question this way is the actual step.
An open stage in the middle of Pavilion 14, surrounded by the stands of Salone exhibitors, with rows of architects, manufacturers and specifiers who had cleared their schedules for the next few minutes. Drafting Futures Arena, Fiera Milano, 22 April. Salone president Maria Porro (also marketing and communications director at the family-run furniture brand Porro) opened the afternoon with a telling admission. A year ago, she said, the Salone had begun thinking about establishing a new pavilion dedicated exclusively to contract projects. From the outset, however, "we understood that it was not possible to apply the rules with which we designed the Salone itself". Contract, she said, is such a different field that it has to be rethought. Hence, said Porro, the call to OMA – because of "the different layers this practice embraces".
That is not the usual register of a fair president speaking about her own format. Anyone who concedes that the in-house rules don't quite fit a particular market segment is, between the lines, also conceding that the business model of the past sixty years has its limits. Through precisely this open door stepped David Gianotten – OMA partner, architect, Dutchman with a Hong Kong track record.
Gianotten spent the next 25 minutes explaining to a furniture-fair industry that contract is not what it usually takes it to be. Contract, he said, is not a contract in the legal sense, but a description of how an industrial and market ecosystem actually functions. What sits at the centre is not the product but the entire environment a client commissions. The point, which Gianotten varied several times: clients are increasingly no longer interested in the object, but in the system behind it. Not in the moment of sale, but in the long-term engagement of all parties involved – client, designer, manufacturer, operator – all the way through to reuse at the end of the lifecycle.
What clients then actually purchase, Gianotten listed with the dryness of a consultant who has mastered the consultancy business: compliance, lifecycle performance, logistics, coordination, guarantees, timing, accountability. What does not appear on the list is beauty. At a furniture fair, that is a statement. "The outcome of a contract is not necessarily an object," said Gianotten, "but this overall environment that clients want to shape." Translation: whoever in the industry is still waiting for the next sofa, the next table, the next chair to shift the logic of the market is missing what clients have been buying for years – the transfer of risk.
That none of this is a passing trend Gianotten illustrated with a historical sweep the room had hardly expected. Even in the Roman Empire, collective buildings were commissioned along these lines, with responsibility for supply, use and after-use. Industrialisation made the model scalable. The Titanic, Gianotten remarked in passing, was one of the first modern one-stop-shop projects. After the world wars, the build-out of the great institutions – administrations, universities, corporate headquarters – made contract the rule. Today, the fragmentation of mixed-use buildings is added to the picture, along with the digital layer and continuous adaptation across decades. In the nautical world, Gianotten said, 95 per cent of all boats already run under contract conditions. A figure that was registered in the room with the audible attentiveness typical of a furniture fair.
OMA itself runs this logic in its own projects: the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, the Potato Head resort in Bali, the conversion of the army barracks at Singapore's Dempsey Hill, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is now being continuously adapted, in its operating phase, to each new government. The common thread: a single line of responsibility running over years, sometimes decades. What architects experience as liberation, because they are allowed to shape complexity, is for manufacturers an invitation to structural self-examination – whether their own organisation can carry that arc at all.
From this follows what was actually astonishing about Gianotten's lecture: his definition of what Salone 2027 is supposed to be. Not a trade fair, because trade fairs show objects and capabilities, not conversations. Not an exhibition, because exhibitions revolve around fixed products, which here do not yet exist. Rather, said Gianotten, something closer to an exchange. A bursa, in his choice of word – a place where parties keep exchanging, where expertise is matched, deals are made, and from there the next step of the project begins. Different types of companies have to be sorted: the large ones that can absorb risk, plus the smaller, innovative ones that supply into them. Add to that clients, operators, users. On this sorting process, said Gianotten, the Curatorial Master Plan is built.
Anyone who heard the message heard a second one with it. A fair that understands itself as an exchange does not need stand square metres as its main currency. What counts is the density of contact between actors who otherwise do not share a room. Whether Milan will actually deliver on that within twelve months is the open question. That Maria Porro and OMA have framed the question this way is the actual step.