Milan Design Week, April 12th to 17th 2011
Milan Design Week (or Salone Internazionale del Mobile) is one of the most important design events of the year, especially for lifestyle design industries. Traditionally MDW is considered to be mostly about furniture, accessories, fashion and style, however in recent years as more tech-oriented companies lean towards a softer and more human approach to their products, Milan Design Week has become an important event for almost all design industries.
ASUS’ design team will be the style gurus behind its own showcase during Milan Design Week. In a bid to understand more about what has gone on behind the scenes, Tech in Style contacted the Design Center to see how it goes beyond just making fancy products.
Senses Remixed
The team opened by stating, “With our “Inspiring Innovation Persistent Perfection” global statement in mind, we start by proposing a theme for each consecutive year to further express this to the world. This year our theme is called “Senses Remixed”. It’s a return to the basics of being human – senses. We realized that important memories are encoded by senses, so when one smells a particular smell – be it a brand of shampoo, home cooking or the humidity in the air – something important is triggered in memory, and the emotions attached to this revive. It’s the same thing with sound too; often when we hear a tune or sound – maybe it was the song playing at the prom, or the crickets chirping outside the window when we were little – things we thought we’d forgotten are suddenly remembered”.
A rendering of one of ASUS' rooms at Milan Design Week
The design team explained it had three rooms to work on, which centered around this core idea:
- The first room is an interactive installation with ASUS products and content specifically focusing on significant memories and moments in life. They hope to reconnect visitors to their own memories, which have been encoded by their senses.
- The second room will showcase a brief history of “the making of ASUS’ sound”, where the team displays the design process and technology behind NX90.
- The third room will demo the new Eee Pads, where visitors can use the four Eee Pad models ASUS launched at CES, in order to get a hands on experience.
The team explained that it was important to highlight that ASUS has evolved from beyond just a computer manufacturer into a company that wants to be ‘the builder of human connections, with a means to savor the important moments’. Its products are often ‘exquisitely designed and crafted not just as an evolution of technology, but as an expression of our artistic and interactive aims’ - they explained that all this motive helped create the senses remixed idea.
If you are attending the Milan Design Week, or are you interested in it, let us know in the comments below!