This year at EDIT Napoli, approximately 100 Italian and international exhibitors presented product designs characterised by sustainability, territoriality, research and quality. With STIR as a media partner, the design fair’s sixth edition, held from October 11 - 13, 2024, was dedicated to ‘editorial design’—the exhibited contemporary designs were developed using artisanal methods with the possibility of being replicated in open series—a broad panorama reflecting the layered richness of Made in Italy, where design is hardly, purely industrial. The three-day design event seems to have fully matured now and confirmed Naples as one of the epicentres of the Mediterranean, on a creative as well as a cultural level globally.

Comparing it to Milan’s leading design celebrations, the Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week, would be inaccurate. However, at EDIT Napoli 2024, we found delightful ingredients difficult to encounter in the ‘design capital’: slowness versus hyper-productivity; conviviality versus profit maximisation; and heritage innovation versus the pursuit of novelty. The design festival’s formula is the result of careful planning by its two curators, Domitilla Dardi and Emilia Petruccelli, who have remained faithful to their intentions.

STIR spoke with Dardi about this year’s outcome, focusing on the fair’s container as well as its contents, precisely because its formats developed over the years seemed particularly effective this time. Firstly, the Roman curator shared her desire to maintain a ‘human dimension’ for the design fair—“EDIT will never be a fair with a thousand exhibitors, because we have designed [one] that earnestly considers the time required for usability. We want visitors to be able to look at everything in a couple of days, talk to designers and companies, metabolise the content and, have a relaxed lunch or snack in between,” Dardi conveyed.

“This work on quality rather than quantity is also being understood by the companies we collaborate with for [EDIT] Cult (special projects developed in a site-specific way in various spaces in the city). It is not a matter of renting a space to launch just any product. It involves a year's work to build a tailor-made initiative. They often ask us for the location catalogue, but we don’t have it. In addition, it makes no sense to colonise the city with a widespread programme of hundreds of events, it would be harmful. I think we have reached the right size with this edition. There may be a slight increase, but this will be 10 per cent, or at most 20 per cent,” the co-founder and curator of EDIT Napoli, who is also an independent design historian.

Interesting or saleable? The two are not separable. The best objects—history has taught us—are both interesting and marketable. – Domitilla Dardi, co-founder and curator, EDIT Napoli

Being an event of this scale, dealing with the commercial/ cultural dichotomy was also a matter of significance. “We overcame the idea that the trade fair is the place of commercial concreteness and must be held in an aseptic context with all the same stands, while cultural events and shows must enhance historical places. We thought: what if we combined the two? The trade fair part remains very business-oriented. I want to mention this because it is a huge effort for us, with a dedicated department offering a range of services to buyers all year round. However, the trade fair space is without separations— without walls, open, and in dialogue with the architecture,” Dardi explains.

“EDIT Cult, on the other hand, is a format in which cultural projects promoted by companies dialogue with a historical place—famous or forgotten—in Naples. Here, the primary objective is not to sell or show the latest collections, but to tell stories of a company's design culture. But it is also crucial to then present commercially effective products. Interesting or saleable? The two are not separable. The best objects—history has taught us—are both interesting and marketable,” she believes.

A dialogue with architecture becomes imperative for the design exhibition, not only on an aesthetic level but also for the content’s accessibility. The large porticoed courtyards of the State Archives favour a circular arrangement of the showcases, allowing an orderly visit and avoiding visual chaos due to too many projects and too much information simmering in the same room. “The courtyards of the Archivio di Stato represent the piazza—a type of public space that urbanistically and anthropologically distinguishes Italy—a neutral place where the sacred meets the profane, overlooked by churches and shops, the town hall and the market,” she elaborates.

The comparison and juxtaposition between the design installations and the selected locations of EDIT Napoli are much more complex and riskier because the beauty of historic buildings is challenging to contrast or adapt to. Dardi speaks in particular, about the work done with the Real Museo Mineralogico: “After visiting it for the first time, I immediately thought that a company capable of dialoguing materially with the place and all the natural stones on display would be needed. ALPI has this capacity. The surfaces represent an artificial and designed sedimentation. Vittorio Alp—whom I consider an enlightened entrepreneur—immediately understood our intentions and embraced the initiative. The show’s design and curation by Piero Lissoni [art director of ALPI] multiplies the context and accentuates the contrast between ancient and contemporary.”

The overall quality of the showcased products at EDIT Napoli 2024 was exceptional, pleasing both the public and industry insiders. The format appeared to be effective, and interest in the editorial design fair is growing even more. Given its success, we must attempt to step into newer challenges or questions or (re)learn what we’ve observed. A potential direction would be to look to the South (and subsequently the Middle East), to investigate a Mediterranean dimension of the project that has been expanding significantly in recent years, and reveals numerous promising connections. The second, more pressing challenge is over-tourism - most of the fair’s locations were in the city’s most crowded areas, assailed by mass tourism. It is of utmost importance that a fair like this identifies additional places of potential and promotes decongestion for a better, more polished experience. Given the excellent work achieved and the sensitivity of the curators, it is right to be ambitious in these regards.