Milan Design Week and Salone del Mobile.Milano is as much about the people as what’s presented. As part of our Design Voices series, we spoke to six leading voices, including Italian creative duo Edoardo Pandolfo and Francesco Palù, about their latest work and shaping the future of design.
Italian creative duo Edoardo Pandolfo and Francesco Palù started experimenting with the possibilities of Murano glass eight years ago. At the time, Pandolfo was coordinating an art exhibition, and Palù was practising as an architect.
Two years later, the pair established their Milanese research studio 6:AM Glassworks – a name inspired by the moment when the glass artisans ignite the workshop furnaces. “We started 6:AM Glassworks as a second job in 2016, not knowing much about glass at the time,” Pandolfo says.
The pair set out to champion a new generation of Murano glassmaking, collaborating with various artisans from the Murano region. “The idea behind 6:AM Glassworks is not to have one production company but to tap into a whole network of artisanship near Venice,” Pandolfo says. “There are hundreds of artisans, and each has their technique.” This foundation has quickly seen an evocative anthology of cast glass lighting, glassware, wall systems and sculptural objects, architectural installations and a consulting arm that works with brands to facilitate bespoke glass product creation. Their repertoire also includes collaborations with
Milanese architect Hannes Peer and industrial studio NM3. “It’s a handmade production, so you must have a human connection first,” Pandolfo says. “It’s always going to be different – there’s no standard – and that’s what makes every piece unique.”
The ‘FLOAT: a new lifecycle for glass’ collection as part of ‘Dropcity in Progress’ for Milan Design Week 2024 | Photography by DSL Studio
A Milanese glass recycling company then asked the pair to take on 10 tonnes of tempered glass from an old bank. “We didn’t know how to process it because it’s tempered glass, so we had to find a low-tech solution to reverse the tempering process,” Palù says. This transpired into a cladding prototype for architectural application, inspired by construction materials. “Fusing multiple layers of glass, we were able to create these industrial patterns because steel is resistant to temperature,” Palù says. “You can imagine the anti-slip checkered plate as a second skin on a building,” he adds.
Palù says they learned of the sheer quantity of available glass through ‘FLOAT’. “We didn’t call anyone. In the last year, we recovered 12 tonnes of glass – imagine if we went looking for it. It’s all about adding value to something that’s already valuable.”
A constant curiosity for new ways of doing saw the 6:AM Glassworks take a decidedly different approach to Milan Design Week and Salone del Mobile. Milano 2024. Housed in a previously abandoned warehouse tunnel behind Milan Central Station as part of ‘Dropcity in Progress’, they presented ‘FLOAT’: a new lifecycle for glass. “Float glass – window glass – is precious because it’s perfectly transparent,” Palù says. “It’s the highest quality of glass you can have industrially, so when you recycle it, you downcycle it.” Palù is intentional about the word reuse, as opposed to recycling. ‘FLOAT’ aims to educate people on a slower way of reusing this type of glass, to increase its lifespan, and to mitigate the impact of the process.
Working with windows from the 1930s recovered from a renovated Milan Palazzo, the studio have created a series of tables, shelving and cladding. Made with tubular stainless steel, the ‘FLOAT’ tables have been designed using four layers of fused glass. The glass pieces are connected by ‘dry joints’ without glue, just like the shelf system. The glass elicits different results in terms of colour and transparency, creating three variations: ‘green, fume and extraclear’.
The ‘FLOAT’ collection for Milan Design Week 2024 | Photography by DSL Studio
6:AM Glassworks presented their 2024 collection ‘FLOAT: a new lifecycle for glass’ as part of ‘Dropcity in Progress’ | Photography by DSL Studio
The ‘FLOAT’ collection comprises a series of tables, shelving and cladding that explore a ‘slow approach’ to the reuse of float glass | Photography by DSL Studio