Salone del Mobile, one of the world’s leading international design and furnishing events, has kicked off in Milan, with more than 300,000 visitors from over 165 countries expected to visit before the show closes on 22 April.

More than 2,000 exhibitors from the worlds of furniture, lighting technology and bathroom and kitchen design are presenting their products and innovations to potential buyers across more than 200,000sq m.

Several brands are also celebrating their new collections in show rooms across the city for the concurrent Milan Design Week, and CLAD will be reviewing some of the most exciting reveals.

Meanwhile, architects, artists and designers including Ma Yansong, Carlo Ratti, Peter Pichler, Phillip K Smith III and Kengo Kuma have opened temporary installations next to some of the city’s historic landmarks.

Ma and his studio, MAD Architects, have teamed up with Audi to create ‘Fifth Ring’, a suspended light installation above a water basin in a Renaissance-style courtyard; Ratti has introduced his ‘Garden of the Four Seasons’ concept to a pavilion next to the Duomo cathedral; Pichler has created a stacked installation of 1,600 wooden beams within the courtyard of Milan University’s Ca' Granda complex; Smith III has created an abstract “faceted wall of mirrors” in the Palazzo Isimbardi; and Kuma has collaborated with IT firm Dassault Systèmes to create Breath/ng, a sculptural installation of twisting coils made of a material that absorbs air pollution.