Creative Academy's Secret Garden at Villa Mozart during Milan Design Week 2024

10 APR 2024

At Villa Mozart, during the Milan Design Week 2024, it is possible to visit the Secret Garden envisaged by the students of Creative Academy, Richemont’s international design school: a selection of unique pieces, an expression of a deep dialogue between design and high craftsmanship, designed by the students and created by master craftsman Simone Crestani, a brilliant interpreter of the infinite variety of nature.

On the occasion of the Milan Design Week 2024, the Creative Academy students present Secret Garden, an exhibition-event of unique design pieces that have been specially conceived and designed by the young talents of Richemont’s corporate design school and handcrafted by one of Italy’s most established and talented glass masters, Simone Crestani.

Secret Garden can be visited for the duration of the Milan Design Week 2024 (April 16th – 21st, 2024) on the first floor of Villa Mozart, an extraordinary private Milanese residence from the 1930s, exceptionally open to the public during the Fuorisalone. The sophisticated and engaging exhibition design, curated by the creative and interior design duo Eligo Studio, is inspired by the fusion of artifice and nature to which the villa itself, entirely covered with ancient ivy that envelops its elegant forms, is an extraordinary testimony.

Secret Garden is realised in collaboration with the Milan-based luxury leather goods Maison Serapian, which not only hosts the event in its showroom spaces, inside the villa, but also contributed to the students’ inspiration with its iconic Secret Bag collection, a masterful example of the harmonious fusion of design and craftsmanship.

To create the objects that make up Secret Garden, the young designers of Creative Academy were asked to interpret the archetype of the secret garden, a metaphorical place for one’s imagination to linger or a real space with precise characteristics and space-time coordinates. All the creations in the exhibition have a direct and literal connection to one of the many possible secret gardens of our imagination, or they can evoke one from a physical, or perhaps biographical detail: a memory, a fear, a dream.

The mission of giving substance to the students’ visions, which are also precise design projects, has been entrusted to Simone Crestani, a master craftsman specialised in working with transparent borosilicate glass, who has brought the Creative Academy students to work in his Atelier with their projects, to bring to life creations that compose a universe between the phantasmagorical and the functional, between art and nature, between design and artistic craftsmanship.

The fourteen objects on display in the Secret Garden were carefully selected from all the projects proposed by students enrolled in the Creative Academy’s Master of Arts in Design and Applied Arts 2024 and were developed under the supervision of Simone Crestani and Alberto Nespoli and Domenico Rocca of Eligo Studio. The transversality in terms of provenance, education, creative approach - the chosen students come from ten different countries - is reflected in a selection of creations capable of conveying the richness of the school and the extraordinary potential of a group of young designers who are preparing to enter the creative studios of the most prestigious global luxury brands.

Secret Garden is produced in partnership with the Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte, and is part of Arts & Crafts & Design at Villa Mozart, an initiative that investigates the dialogue between design thinking and high craftsmanship and encompasses the various exhibitions that can be visited during the Fuorisalone in the prestigious Milanese mansion. A curiosity offers location enthusiasts one more reason to visit the exhibition: from the windows of Villa Mozart one can admire the garden of Palazzo Serbelloni and that of Villa Necchi, with which the prestigious location shares one of the authors: that Piero Portaluppi who is by now - more than any other architect - an absolute symbol of timeless Milanese style.

About Creative Academy

Creative Academy is the Corporate Design School founded in 2003 by Richemont, specialised in the design of jewellery, watches and accessories. The school offers the Master of Arts in Design and Applied Arts, a postgraduate course that each year trains twenty young creative talents coming from around the world. With a concrete approach and a faculty made up mostly of leading figures of the Group (CEO, Creative Directors, etc.), the Master, which has a total duration of ten months, allows students to learn and practice for seven months in Milan and then it offers the most deserving students the exclusive opportunity to conclude the training course with three months of internship in one of the creative studios of Richemont. The didactic program is developed through projects, specialised seminars and constant interaction with the Maison Richemont, which include brands such as Buccellati, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, A. Lange & Söhne, Baume & Mercier, IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger Lecoultre, Panerai, Piaget, Roger Dubuis, Vacheron Constantin, Alaïa, AZ Factory, Chloé, Delvaux, dunhill, Gianvito Rossi, Montblanc, Peter Millar, Purdey, Serapian.
www.creative-academy.com