A new green season is opening for ICON DESIGN.  From this month, and for the whole of 2020, the magazine edited by Annalisa Rosso with editor-at-large Maria Cristina Didero, will explore the world of environmental sustaiability, looking at detail – together with leading figures from the world of design, interiors and architecture – at the ecologically-related challenges that the sector will be required to face in the coming years.

In this way the Mondadori Group’s upscale furnishing brand, a point of reference for the design world,  will inaugurate the new editorial path with which it aims to become a privileged channel of analysis and debate to help companies in the sector to interpret and respond to the changes and new needs for the future of the environment.

This issue will be the running theme for the whole of next year, along with a number of new features, including a special edition to be published with the March 2020 issue of ICON DESIGN that will present the most innovative brands and projects in this area.

“As Leonardo Di Caprio said when he received his Oscar: climate change is real! However absurd it may seem, in 2019 there are still people who don’t believe it and there is still a need to reiterate the fact that we must dramatically and immediately change course – tomorrow is already too late – change our behaviour and activate our efforts and determination to avoid a catastrophe and continue to have faith in humanity and the future,” commented Annalisa Rosso and Maria Cristina Didero.

Ti inaugurate this new path, the new issue of ICON DESIGN, on newsstands from 8 October, will appear with the headline Luce, Energia e Bellezza (Light, energy and Beauty), three key words which together summarise and represent different visions of what can more generally be taken to be green. There is a visit to Longhouse, near Melbourne, Australia, a biological design farm, cooking school and private residence all at once; two homes such as Villa Cardo, which is perfectly integrated in the surrounding Salento countryside, and an apartment in the heart of Brussels  redesigned by the French architect Pierre Yovanovitch following a play of light. Alongside the unmissable events at the  design festivals of Milan and Eindhoven, there are interviews with protagonists with green souls: la primatologist and activist Jane Goodwall, the light designer Ingo Maurer, the artist Linda Tegg and the architect Norman Foster. And then there is also the Natural Beauties project, curated by Felix Burrichter, Valentina Cameranesi and Enrico Pompili along with photographer Pim Top. “Why can’t we surround ourselves with beauty?”, asks Burrichter in his introduction to a feature that looks at 11 brands through the same number of surreal images and high-impact slogans, like “energy without meaning is an impossibility” and “love me now, love me forever”.

A fourth edition of ICON DESIGN Talks will also be dedicated to environmental sustainability during the 2020 Milano Design Week – with general coordination by Andrea Boschetti and guest curator Marco Sammicheli: a cycle of conferences, master-classes and debates with architects, designers and professionals who, in their work, are striving to redefine the relationship between the individual and the city, intercepting future needs and necessities in order to build a better world.