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Yamaha Design Laboratory to Present You Are Here Exhibition at Milan Design Week 2023 – Furniture That Makes Life With Musical Instruments Fun

MILAN & HAMAMATSU, JAPAN, February 28―Yamaha Corporation’s Design Laboratory will participate in Milan Design Week, one of the world’s largest design-related events. The exhibit—titled You Are Here—will present furniture that makes life with musical instruments fun, created by the Laboratory. The exhibition will take place from April 18 to 23 at BIANCHIZARDIN Contemporary Art in Milan, Italy.

You Are Here: Eleven New Designs

From 2005 to 2008 and again in 2019, for a total of five times now, Yamaha Design Laboratory has presented designs showcasing the Yamaha world view at Milan Design Week. Yamaha also collaborated with the world-renowned ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne and presented the results together with ECAL at Milan Design Week 2022. The Laboratory works unceasingly with musical instruments, and directly experiencing the responses of attendees from around the world has helped the Laboratory to further develop its design philosophy and more clearly define the identity of Yamaha design.

For this standalone exhibition—Yamaha’s first in four years—Yamaha Design Laboratory has created eleven new designs that enhance the relationship between musical instruments and people’s lives. The exhibition title, You Are Here, symbolizes the value of being with a treasured presence.

Exhibition Overview

Title: You Are Here

Dates: April 18 (Tue.) to 23 (Sun.) 11am-7pm  *until 6pm on final day

Entrance Fee: Free

Venue: BIANCHIZARDIN Contemporary Art (Via Pietro Maroncelli 14, 20154 Milan, Italy)

Exhibition Size: 8.5 m x 10.5 m (90 m2)

Comment from Yamaha Design Laboratory Director Manabu Kawada

Musical instruments can sometimes be an extension of your body, and at times a cherished partner. We believe that there is a special intimacy to the presence of an instrument that makes it truly “with us” unlike the simple inanimate presence of other objects. For this exhibition, we have created furniture that makes life with musical instruments fun by crafting spaces for them in our daily lives and lowering the barrier to simply sitting down and playing. These designs bring musical instruments into our conversations and add music to our lives. The title of our exhibition, You Are Here, symbolizes the value of being present. In this era of uncertainty and tumultuous change, we believe that it is all the more important to feel the reality of a treasured presence.

Related Website & SNS Accounts

Website: https://www.yamaha.com/en/about/design/events_topics/milan_design_week_2023/

 *Exhibit item details, a press kit, and more to be available from April 18.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yamahadesignlab/

Milan Design Week

Held annually in April, each year over 1,000,000 people attend Milan Design Week, which consists of the “Salone Internazionale del Mobile” B2B furniture trade fair, along with events, exhibitions, and installations found all across the city of Milan. During the 2019 event, Yamaha presented four products in an exhibition titled pulse, which was well-received with approximately 26,000 attendees stopping by the Yamaha booth.

– The report on the 2019 exhibition:https://www.yamaha.com/en/about/design/events_topics/pulse_2019/

Yamaha’s Booth at Milan Design Week 2019

Yamaha Design Laboratory

Established in 1963, Yamaha Design Laboratory is Yamaha’s in-house design division. The Laboratory oversees the design of a wide variety of products, ranging from acoustic and digital musical instruments to audio equipment, golf products, and more. Its designs are highly praised, having received numerous top awards both domestically and internationally from the Red Dot Design Awards, iF Design Awards, and Good Design Awards (Japan), among others. https://www.yamaha.com/en/about/design/