Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2012: this week visitors to La Rinascente department store in Milan have been trading souvenirs from the moon, making plastic from plants and learning how to download a house, courtesy of Hacked Lab curated by Beatrice Galilee.

Architects Carmody Groarke have installed metal mesh cylinders to hack the colonnaded facade of the department store facing the Duomo cathedral, while the Hacked Lab performances, installations and workshops take place in the basement inside an expandable truck-shaped stage by EXYZT.

Promising “100 hours of rebellious imagination,” the program for the next few days includes food performances by Honey & Bunny and Caroline Hobkinson, low-tech alternatives to high-tech manufacturing by Something & Son and designer Dominic Wilcox in competition with a 3D-printing machine to build a model of the Duomo.

See the full program here.

Watch an interview with curator Beatrice Galilee that we filmed at the exhibition in today’s daily TV show from Dezeen Studio powered by Jambox at MOST.

The Salone Internazionale del Mobile takes place from 17 to 22 April. See all our stories about Milan 2012 here.

Here’s some more information from Galilee:

la Rinascente welcomes rebellious imagination

‘Hacked’, 100 hours of rebellious creativity, will be rampaging and rollicking its way through Rinascente during Milan Design Week. Hacking – the thrill of modification and customization – will be celebrated here in bombastic style.

To celebrate the world’s original design festival, Salone del Mobile, la Rinascente’s flagship store proudly presents ‘Hacked’. Over the course of 100 hours the store will be radically altered – inside and out – as it becomes an interactive experimental lab space.

By collaborating with the most exciting young talents in design, la Rinascente invites everyone to ‘Come, explore and hack’.

Following a contemporary concept of appropriation, alteration and transformation which goes through art, design, web and technology, “Hacked” is an experimental programme curated by Beatrice Galilee which includes live activities, events, installations, performances and workshops.

Amongst the site-specific works by artists, architects and designers is a vast hack of la Rinascente’s colonnaded facade by Carmody Groarke and a flexible, expandable ‘Hacked Lab’ stage driven to Milan from Paris by EXYZT. The Hacked Lab programmeis intended to provide a platform for young designers whose work exists outside of conventional exhibition object parameters and crosses various disciplines.

The events range from scientific workshops on how to make your own Large Hadron Collider to performances, downloadable buildings and astronauts selling moon dust.

A programme of fleeting, yet arresting design events will take place at least three times a day, offering visitors interactive, visceral, playful, futuristic, scientific, choreographic, and informative, but always designed, experiences.