The impact of the pandemic, with the cancellation of many key events in Milan, led to the decision. With great regret on the part of the founder Margriet Vollenberg and the whole international design community, Ventura Projects has come to a stopping point.
The decision seems to be definitive, not only due to the postponement of the Salone del Mobile to next year, as the founder and art director of the initiative remarked a few days ago on the social networks: “After 10 successful editions and while fully prepared for the 11th edition of Ventura Projects during Milan Design Week 2020, Ventura Projects is no longer feasible. (…) We will no longer be on show during Milan Design Week and other international design events in the future.”
The appointments in Milan at Magazzini Raccordati, near the Central Station, and at BASE, for the initiatives of Ventura Centrale and Ventura Future – previously at Lambrate and Città Studi – were firm musts in the program of the FuoriSalone, the same could be said for the international ‘spin-offs’in Berlin, London, Kortrijk, New York and Dubai.
The cancellation of the design week this year “has had an enormous and irreversible impact on the company,” namely Organisation in Design, split between the teams in Utrecht and Milan; and the efforts of Margriet Vollenberg to salvage the situation have not sufficed. “It is therefore with great pain in my heart that I came to the conclusion that it is no longer feasible to build my dream, and therefore the dreams of many designers and design studios.”
Ventura, over the years, has been a launching pad and a stage for over 7000 exhibitors, with countless innovations, a hotbed of experimental design and a setting for amazing installations.
Many creative talents – like Maarten Baas, Luca Nichetto, Satoshi Yoshiizumi – have expressed their thanks and support for what the organizers have been able to do over the last decade.
“We sincerely hope that the energized atmosphere of global design events will return soon – Margriet Vollenberg (here in the pic with Maarten Baas) concludes. – More than ever, to cope with this crisis and the aftermath, the world is in need of the creativity, playfulness and ingenuity that design can offer.”
