COS x Sou Fujimoto at Salone del Mobile

As Milan’s influential furniture design convention Salone del Mobile kicks off for another year, visitors may find themselves as the ones under the spotlight—built by lauded Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.

Celebrating its fifth year participating in the event (which marks its 55^th anniversary from April 12 to 17, 2016), minimalist menswear and womenswear label COS has enlisted Fujimoto to create a public installation exploring light and space—or, in part, lack thereof.

Located in Cinema Arti, Milan’s former film centre, Fujimoto’s Forest of Light uses large spotlights to dot the area of tables and benches, allowing the public to dip in and out of darkness.

For COS, a modern label focused on function and form, mapping out a world of clashing positive and negative space was a natural extension. Collaborating with architects and industrial designers only furthers the brand’s aesthetic, which builds around shape, silhouette, and structure (in Salone del Mobiles past, COS has collaborated with the likes of Nendo and Snarkitecture). Launched in 2007, the European brand’s latest collection features its signature earth and muted tones used in clean and stimulating lines.

Fujimoto was commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery to design its 2013 pavilion, making him the youngest architect ever to do so. More recently, he was chosen as one of 23 architects to participate in Réinventer Paris, a project created to revitalize the French capital’s public spaces in innovative and exciting ways. If Forest of Light is any type of foreshadowing, then Paris, like Milan, is in for something divinely unique.

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