Norwegian Presence is back in Brera for 2023 with an inspiring and wide-ranging selection of new designs from a hand-picked roster of Norway’s most exciting independent makers and creative studios.

 

Norwegian Presence has been the flagship exhibition of the country’s design talent and manufacturing excellence since its first Salone appearance in 2015. This year’s show moves to a beautiful new venue at Via Pietro Maroncelli 2, with a striking exhibition design by Kråkvik & D’Orazio and Bjorn van den Berg.

 

As well as offering visitors an opportunity to discover innovative new products including furniture, ceramics and textiles, Norwegian Presence also offers a wider insight into the material-minded and collaboration-driven creative culture of Norway, and the infrastructure that supports it.

 

The Norwegian Presence curatorial team have put together a line-up of extraordinary designers from and/or working in Norway today. Although diverse in discipline and varied in approach, the designers are unified by their shared focus on materiality, their embracing of circular-design practices and their – distinctly Norwegian – approach to working collaboratively. Some are pioneering local sourcing strategies to develop new production models; others are finding premium applications for waste or low-grade materials. Some are adopting intuition-led approaches to craft; others are taking a strictly form-follows-function tack to solve problems with elegance and simplicity.

 

Whether working with wool or wood, aluminium or clay, this year’s line-up places an emphasis on sustainable Norwegian materials as much as it does on Norwegian design, with many participants working closely with material-specialist producers to create sustainable products from locally available resources. 

 

Norwegian Presence will also mark the launch of a special collaboration between aluminium manufacturer Hydro and designer Lars Beller Fjetland: Bello! – a lightweight bench in100% recyclable extruded aluminium, inspired by the process of making – what else? – pasta.