We're two days into Milan Design Week, and although we haven't hit the big shows yet, we've discovered plenty of smaller wonders within or near La Brera and Ventura Centrale, ranging from wooden marionettes made from chairs to electric vehicle sketches:

"Giants with Dwarf" for horgenglarus

Panda Giant

Affe Giant

Biene Giant

Swiss furniture company, horgenglarus dug into their archive to create Giants with Dwarf, an installation filled with gigantic wooden marionette creatures designed by Stephen Hürlemann. When looked at closely, visitors notice that each critter is assembled with horgenglarus chairs from the past. The creatures move when the giant wooden rings sitting in front of each one are gently pulled on. If you're going to destroy furniture dating as far back as 1880, at least turn it into giant pandas, bees and monkeys.

nendo for Atelier Swarovski

Atelier Swarovski by nendo's 'Softpond' collection only uses one piece of material per item

Atelier Swarovski by nendo 'Softpond' collection

Atelier Swarovski by Nendo 'Tangent' Collection

Atelier Swarovski by Patricia Urquiola 'Brillo' Collection

Swarovski had some interesting items on display at their Atelier space at the courtyard of Palazzo Serbrlloni, including two collaborative collections with nendo and crystal vessels by Patricia Urquiola that change shape based on what fills them. The Austria-based crystal company also decided to bring a bit of home with them to Milan through a pop-up cafe featuring cakes and pastries from their favorite Austrian bakery.

BYTON's concept car debut

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Electric vehicle company BYTON made the Europe debut of their concept SUV all day yesterday in La Brera. For Milan Design Week, their unveiling focused on the design process, featuring sketches, material swatches and a mini clay model. We'll be following this post with an interview with BYTON's VP of design soon.

"Typecasting" by Vitra

Part of the very large exhibition

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We already covered Vitra and Robert Stadler's Typecasting exhibition, but that didn't take away from the wonder of seeing it in person. While it was thrilling to see Vitra furniture from the archives scattered together on a giant platform, we were even more curious in The Communals section, which featured new visions for communal furniture by various designers, including Robert Stadler himself, Barber & Osgerby and more. We only wish visitors had been able to wander through and immerse themselves in the aisles of coveted furniture.

Dozie Kanu for RIMOWA

Dozie Kanu x RIMOWA furniture

On the outskirts of Milan lies Spazio Maiocchi, a new space that hopes to merge art, design and fashion to, "shape new cultural experiences. Three exhibitions are on view for Milan Design Week: Dozie Kanu x RIMOWA (presented by Kaleidoscope Magazine), Nike's Brothers of the World and Timur Si-Qin's NEW PEACE. We appreciated that each of the three exhibitions fell clearly into one of the three categories of art, design and fashion. On the design side, emerging furniture artist Dozie Kanu was tasked by RIMOWA to create a progressive image of their classic aluminum luggage. Each piece in the exhibition featured an actual piece of RIMOWA luggage. 

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