A busy week in Milan

Last week Light Collective hit Euroluce in Milano. Cramming in as many things as possible to our trip, we came back broken on Sunday night.

First off we attended the crammed Flos party on Thursday evening which was the launch of the new Paul Cocksedge minimalist pendant but totally missed the special BMW projections as we were afraid to stick our heads inside the red pendants!

Friday AM was straight to the fairground and after various meetings, we started on the Flos stand with a personal tour by Paul Lazeravic. Beginning here was a big mistake as nothing looked quite so good afterwards.

Always ready to innovate in design terms, Flos are truly on a roll. We were wowed by the Phillipe Stark integrated luminaire/iPad charger, the mini Kelvin, the new soft architecture additions and the floor standing lamps with integrated gobo projection by Marcel Wanders. We want to spec it all.

The whole world was on the Flos stand or thereabouts and we bumped into many friends - Carla Wilkins of Lichtvision; Steve Bradley of Debbas; Claudia Kappl from Rick Joy Architects, Arizona; Amit Gupta of Vis a Vis, Delhi; oh and Ben Cronin from Lighting but we suspect he was just there for the prosecco.

The show lacked flair after the Flos experience but some lovely stand outs included Vibia, Secto and the Philips outdoor tree luminaires.

We must also mention Cattelani & Smith’s minimal suspended ring fittings. From the sublime to the ridiculous when compared with some of the OTT colour changing LED chandeliers surely suited only for the lap dancing club sector?

After the show we hit the Zona Tortona with an international group of designers. At our table we had Croatia, Finland, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Chile, Singapore and Israel represented.

Saturday saw us attend the PLDA AGM in the morning with new president Francesco Iannone stepping up to take the reins. We then headed off to meet the lovely Elettra Bordonaro and Antigone Acconci. They are the new Flynn Talbot - meaning they are our guides to pulling off another secret Xicato dinner in Italy. We visited several potential venues before settling on a stunning location (not be revealed but even better than London and Berlin). If you’re in Milan at the end of June then do whatever it takes to get on the guest list.

We dined in a beautiful restaurant on the canal with the lighting industry’s hot new comedy double act - Light Bureau’s Paul Traynor and Richard Hall of Zumtobel:Thorn.

We ended the evening drinking Prosecco on a pavement with Glenn Shrum and Sarah Adams, PLDA regional co-ordinators for the US and UK respectively, plus Koert Vermeulen and Gianne Traversi.

Sunday saw us visiting the iGuzzini exhibition and the Solar Kitchen at the Triennale building leaving just enough time for pasta and a gelato before flying home. A totally different experience to Frankfurt!

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