An integral part of the program MilanoLeonardo500, AQUA. Leonardo's vision is the installation with which the Salone del Mobile.Milano pays tribute to the great Renaissance genius.
A project that celebrates the originality and visionary depth of his investigations on the element of water right in the heart of Milan, to underline the precise value of the relationship between manifestation and city.
On the occasion of the 58 edition, the Salone del Mobile.Milano reconfirms its deep bond with Milan, recalling its most ingenious and eclectic "adopted son" through an installation of great quality and evocative power. A work that simultaneously tells a small fragment of the Renaissance and the future of Milan, whose visit will prove to be a memorable cultural and emotional experience.
“With the AQUA installation. Leonardo's vision we wanted to celebrate the great master of the Renaissance and his ability to innovate understood as an aptitude to always look beyond, laying the foundations for progress, or for the continuous overcoming of the existing. Qualities that our design / business system possesses and our city fully embodies. By staging his research on water in a physical and neuralgic place like the Conca dell'Incoronata, we are bridging the gap between past and future, offering a vision of what has been and what can be where creative talent meets the entrepreneurial one " says Claudio Luti, President of the Salone del Mobile.
From the 6 to the 14 April, inside the Conca dell'Incoronata, whose wooden doors were designed by Leonardo, the Salone offers the city Aqua. Leonardo's vision, an immersive site-specific experience conceived by Marco Balich and developed together with Balich Worldwide Shows. The absolute protagonist is water, a natural element studied for a long time by the Master as an artist, architect, scientist and engineer.
To cover the Conca, a real architectural graft was created in the form of a large body of water, at the end of which a large LED screen becomes a window on the Milan of the future, showing us a changing skyline according to the time of day.
Below this structure, right inside the canal, a wunderkammer was created in which visitors can enjoy all the beauty, energy and shape of the water thanks to a total environment that surrounds them with images and sounds thanks to the use of the most advanced technologies. After passing through a sensory door that invites the viewer to leave the chaotic city routine and indulge in an experience of unprecedented immersion, the path begins in a mirror room in which an interactive symphony of sounds and gorgoos orchestrates the delivery of real water jets.
At the end of the path, an ethereal projection reveals the ascending and descending movement of the waters managed by the Leonardesque locks. While the level rises, strobe lights modify the jets of water with an optical illusion, slowing them down to isolate them in very slow drops, suspended in time and space, reflected and multiplied ad infinitum in the mirrors. The experience ends when the projection becomes transparent and reveals an unexpected artistic reworking of the Master's drawings.
