Electronics meets crafts at Fuori Salone, Milano

Fuori Salone is a 6 day city-wide event, taking place across Milan celebrating art and design expertise. It takes place at the same time as Milan's Furniture Fair.

Collaboration with GO ON
Panasonic has been working with GO ON, a working group of Kyoto craftspeople who apply traditional Japanese craft techniques to create design with international and contemporary appeal. Japan has centuries of traditional craft heritage, including pottery and textile design. As Panasonic approaches its 100 year anniversary, the two organisations are defining what “living well” is for the next 100 years.

To develop the appliances and products of the future, the company is turning to its Japanese heritage, and incorporating traditional aesthetics, sensitivity and culture. The end result is the ‘Electronics Meets Crafts’ exhibition, where on show in Milan's Brera Academy were a number of prototypes created at Panasonic Design’s Kyoto KADEN Lab. Through the display Panasonic is promoting its "Future Craft" philosophy that the company is looking to use as it goes into the next century of its history.

"The Japanese people have a certain perspective on nature and the four senses...I want people to experience these forms of nature for themselves"

“There is a heritage contained in 200 years of history. I imagined the form created when this ‘heritage’ met ‘state-of-the-art”, said Shuichi Furumi, General Producer at SD Associates, Inc., and who was in charge of the total design and overall production of the exhibit with GO ON’s designers.

“The Japanese people have a certain perspective on nature and the four seasons. They bring nature into their lives in one form or another, and I want people to experience these forms of nature for themselves. Images, fog, mist…by joining these together, a brand new imagination can be created. I hope this experience sharpens people’s senses.

“We chose to work together with GO ON because they have the foresight to connect tradition and the future,” said Hitoshi Nakagawa, Product Designer at Panasonic’s Design Centre.  “To consider the next 100 years, even the next 300 years, we need to continue creating new and unique values in order to communicate this spirit to everyone.

“Electronics are still lacking in the world of crafts, but by bringing these together, I believe we can create something that will take people into the future,” said Takahiro Yagi, who led on the GO ON project. “There is a value in extremely refined materials, materials that you want to continue feeling in your hands. It’s an experience that resonates with all five senses.

“In creating appliances for the next 100 years, we must include this value in our products, and I believe that we were able to express that vision to the world here,” said Hitoshi Nakagawa.

B2B installation
Elsewhere, the Magnolia courtyard of the Academy featured the B2B installation, where eight PT-DZ13 projectors created an emotional and reflective space that combined the serenity of nature with the power of high brightness projection. 

The PT-DZ13 has 12,000 lumens of brightness. With an innovative dual lamp system and a lamp relay mode, the projector is suited to performance and exhibition work as should a lamp fail projection can still go on without any interruption. Coupled with the ability for 360-degree mounting and a lens-centred design, it fits easily in a wide variety of installation locations and scenarios.

Collaboration with Brera Academy students
The third installation as part of the project involved the Brera Academy’s students, where Panasonic collaborated with them and enabled them to make use of the Panasonic Space Player to create their own installations.

“At our Accademia we now have a brand new department of design and new technology. Therefore we see this collaboration as a novelty that will bring great energy. I really think it will be the bread and butter of the future,” said Franco Marrocco, Director of the Academy.

The innovative lighting and projector hybrid possesses both lighting and laser projection functions in a single spotlight-shaped design. Attaching to standard lighting rails, it can be used in retail and museum applications and integrated into existing lighting infrastructure without needing a separate system.