The focus of the second edition of Lake Como Design Fair is on colour.

A curated design selection is presented at the Teatro Sociale Como and a section – entirely dedicated to architecture – is held at the Palazzo del Broletto bringing together drawings, models, photographs, design and artistic works from architects and contemporary photographers. Free from the constraints of divisions by stands, the fair seems much more like an exhibition, where all that is on show is for sale.

The ambition of the design section is to immerse the Ridotto rooms of Teatro Sociale Como in all the chromatic gradations of the most contemporary design projects.

The fair showcases around 120 carefully selected design objects that highlight new complementarities, fresh insights and independent creative processes. By focusing on colour, the fair will engage visitors in a kind of permanent firework display and enable them to share the positivity and optimism of the selected projects.

Two installations are added to the selected works: Insieme ordinato di aste, a 13-meter multifunctional object by Como-based architect Marco Balzarotti, and a huge polychrome fabric designed by textile artist and designer Karol Pichler, made from recycled materials.

Unlike in the design section of the fair, the architects are not expected to provide design objects, but also items that have been created before, during or after the creative process accompanying their projects, whether actually built or not, or simply utopian. 

The result is a unique architecture fair that welcomes the most recent experiments and artefacts, some of which have been made specifically for the occasion and gathered in a Wunderkammer dedicated to colour.

Besides sketches, photographs or models, architects are invited to also consider "accidental masterpieces," where serendipity (or not) may have generated these collaterally to their designs: mock-ups, resin fragments, foam sculptures, abstract totems.