Open call for the Lake Como Design Festival

Lightness is the title of the new edition of Lake Como Design Festival, taking place from 14 to 22 September 2024 on Lake Como. In addition to this year's exhibitions and installations, the open call for the Contemporary Design Selection section curated by Giovanna Massoni returns in February.

Lightness is the underlying theme of this new event which accompanies the visitor on a widespread journey to discover site-specific exhibitions and installations in the city of Como and around its lake. Never more than in this moment have we needed lightness, that same lightness described by Italo Calvino in his American Lessons which "is associated with precision and determination, not with vagueness and abandonment to chance". A constant need over time that pushes us towards the illusion of being able to ignore the force of gravity and get closer to the sky. From Leonardo's mechanical flight to the construction of the Eiffel Tower, from the use of glass to that of aerogel, 'light thinking' has always involved different fields - literature, theatre, art, design, architecture, physics, chemistry - and accompanies us in a new event where lightness finds the right balance between shape, matter and movement.


Villa del Grumello

“This year's edition will be characterized by some confirmations and at the same time by many great innovations,” says Lorenzo Butti, creator and artistic director of the festival. “The growing enthusiasm of the public and an ever-increasing participation of institutions and local realities have allowed us to work on increasingly ambitious projects, once again ranging between ever-changing disciplines and places. From this perspective, the theme of lightness is understood as a modus operandi: the ability to distance oneself from things to understand them deeply".

Among the confirmations of the sixth edition, the Contemporary Design Selection returns, curated again this year by Giovanna Massoni, with the open call intended for independent designers which will end on 31 March 2024. We will also review some of the locations that have become part of the festival , such as the Palazzo del Broletto and the former church of San Pietro in Atrio, in the heart of the city of Como.


Chilometro della conoscenza

The biggest news of this new edition will be the opening to the public of the Kilometer of Knowledge, in collaboration with the Villa del Grumello Association and the Antonio Ratti Foundation which will host the new exhibition itinerary. Located near the center of the city of Como, the Kilometer of Knowledge brings together, through centuries-old parks for a total of 15 hectares, some historic villas overlooking the lake. The festival exhibitions will take shape inside some of these villas, such as the prestigious Villa del Grumello, which will host a selection of international galleries and publishers. In the scenographic greenhouses and other spectacular sites, as in a widespread kunsthalle, there will be space for the installations of the projects selected by Giovanna Massoni.


Chilometro della Conoscenza

Contemporary Design Selection
Kilometer of Knowledge, via Cernobbio 11, Como
The Contemporary Design Selection embraces Italo Calvino's concept of lightness, the theme of this year's Lake Como Design Festival. As the author wrote in his American Lessons (1988), design thinking, like storytelling, is an elaborate form that allows us to escape from the limited perspective of an individual ego, not only to enter other egos similar to ours, but to make what has no words speak: the bird that lands on the gutter, the tree in spring and the tree in autumn, the stone, the concrete, the plastic.
This year too, the works on display will be selected by Lake Como Design Festival together with Giovanna Massoni among those sent through an open call open to independent designers and artists until March 31, 2024.
“Design is to all intents and purposes a narrative practice.” declares Giovanna Massoni “Objects tell stories and are often the result of 'speculative tales', borrowing the definition of the anthropologist Donna Haraway. A product is, or should be, the result of investigations that question past and present history and which invite us to appropriate useful tools to define a new project. The 'words' of design - arising from a poetic, philosophical, scientific or critical act - dialogue with matter and function, social and cultural context, emphasizing the ethical and often visionary sense of the design act: its ability to explore, imagining them, future scenarios of a better world.”


Villa del Grumello

This thought translates into three thematic clusters.
The first imagines a subtraction of weight, materials, processes and structures that determine the lightness of the object, but also a reduction in weight and impact on the planet.
A second cluster is dedicated to agile, transformable, foldable, transportable, multifunctional and adaptable objects.
The third thinks about spaces of light: light is lightness par excellence when its function is not only to illuminate but to allow natural or built space to transcend materiality and generate visual epiphanies and emotions.
For this sixth edition, contemporary design is hosted within the new locations of the Kilometer of Knowledge. The Contemporary Design Selection, curated for the second consecutive year by Giovanna Massoni, will focus on independent design and will find space in a series of highly fascinating architecture distributed throughout the park.

For the first time the Festival opens the doors to a project in which the selected designers will be able to stay in Como for the entire duration of the Festival and be an active part of it, experiencing the crucial moments of the event in person: from the press tour to the opening, from the panel of talks dedicated to them, at the finissage. Many appointments on the agenda for a Festival full of opportunities.