OPOS | Contest and exhibition: UNDER 35

Contest and exhibition: UNDER 35 - Salone del Mobile 1998

1 - 7 June 2000

In 2000, coinciding with the Milan Salone del Mobile, OPOS presented its traditional exhibition of prototypes designed and created by Under 35 designers.

The exhibition was the result of a selection process carried out by a group of university professors, entrepreneurs, industry journalists, and the event’s promoters. Now in its tenth edition, the initiative, while strongly oriented toward experimentation, still managed to achieve concrete results. An increasing number of projects presented by OPOS were transformed into products and became part of the catalogs of major companies in the sector.

It is important to clarify that OPOS played only the role of promoting young design, aiming to facilitate the connection between emerging designers, the press, and the production world.

The design process had to carefully consider:

The use of materials, verifying their technical and expressive potential;
Technological and production processes;
The reevaluation of assembly and interlocking, exploring compatibility between different and homogeneous materials (with particular attention to finishes);
The potential for reuse and recycling (both of the material for a “second life” and of the object itself);
The impact of discarded objects on the ecosystem.

The object had to once again encourage an active and curious use by those who interacted with it; it needed to develop an internal creative resource capable of educating toward a different kind of use, rather than mere consumption.

Design: GUM
Project: Enrico Azzimonti, Jordi Pigem De Palol
Money box.