Kinky rubber tables and spikes. These provocative designs will make you rethink how you style your home

Held every springtime, Milan Design Week is the biggest moment of the year for the world of design – from the makers to the admirers of furniture and interior decor. Creatives converge from all over the globe, new designs are showcased, and trends are set for the forthcoming year. The Italian city, already a thriving metropolis of business and fashion becomes charged with a frenetic energy created by hundreds of exhibitions and happenings. While Milan Design Week evolved from the Salone del Mobile furniture fair, launched in 1961 and still going strong, much of the most exciting design these days is found well beyond those trade halls. From the historic palazzi and stylish showrooms, to the villas, apartments, unexpected industrial hangars and abandoned buildings that open their doors; this is where thrilling gems can be discovered. The emerging designers and cutting-edge brands are often more experimental than the long-running commercial producers – so it is the former that visitors look to for inspiration and a taste of what’s to come. Here, then, are eight of the most surprising and enchanting objects from this year’s showcase that might just inspire your own home design. A thorny vase (to go with your spiky chair) One trend taking over the design world right now is spikes. Spiky furniture and home accessories introduce a punk sensibility into the home, and boldly eschew the assumption of comfort. Gast Studio’s Stem Vase, on show at group exhibition Deoron, features glossy oversized thorn shapes that give the object both a hostile presence and a pleasingly jagged profile, like a rose stem on steroids

. Produced in 3D-printed resin and available in black or chrome, it’s certainly a statement for the dining table. Speaking of spikes, over at the megalith design exhibition Alcova, CJ Aslan – founder of fashion brand ASLAN WORLD – presents a chair and ottoman covered in a sea of sharp stainless steel ones, interspersed playfully with gemstones. The sci-fi bed The work of Astronauts, the Athens-based design studio of Danae Dasyra and Joe Bradford, has a kind of sci-fi, sculptural playfulness that perfectly aligns with the Gen Z fetishization of punky, Y2K style. The duo specializes in hydroforming, an industrial process where hydraulic fluid is used to shape ductile metals into new forms, which it applies to furniture and decor. Agnes, the studio’s new bed design, was presented as part of the “La Casa Magica” (“The Magic House”) exhibition at Milan’s Nilufar Gallery, and proposes a whole new meaning to adventurous bedrooms. Comprising irregular, curling and warped forms, the bed is crafted from stainless steel, powder coated in pink and black shades, with its design reportedly informed by female eroticism and intuition. Just beware the sharp edges. The chair within a chair Oh, to be held like a chair. This delightfully confusing creation from Slovenian designer Lara Bohinc features a shiny aluminum chair physically held within the arms of a reclining mahogany copy of the chair below. A skewed assemblage of interlocking shiny, bulbous forms, it’s almost as if a (sophisticated and design-conscious) clown has produced a balloon animal gone wrong. Read original article