This giant Pinocchio-like figure is the centerpiece of the installation created by the Spanish designer, Jaime Hayon, for Bisazza. Fusing the techniques of graphic and product design, Hayon creates vibrant, expressive neo-surrealist objects. The bold colors and exaggerated shapes reflect the post-modernist furniture of Studio Alchymia and Memphis, and today's New Rave style. (Courtesy of Bisazza)

Like Jaime Hayon, Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel of the Dutch design duo, Studio Job, imbue product design with a graphic sensibility to create vividly expressive sculptural objects. Homework is collection of seven sculptural objects designed for Moss by blowing up cooking pots, buckets and stools to monumental proportions and rendering them in a monumental material, bronze. (Courtesy of Moos)

The latest work from the Eindhoven studio of the young Dutch designer, Maarten Baas, is the Sculpt collection of hand-made furniture, which he describes as "rough scale models of different kinds of products transformed into 1:1 furniture". Engagingly clumsy and almost naïve, Sculpt displays the neo-surrealist qualities of exaggerated proportions and cartoonish humor. (photo Maarten van Houten)

Sculpt chair by Maarten Baas. (photo Maarten van Houten)

Inspired by classic modernist chairs, such as Eero Saarinen's Womb Chair and Hans Wegner's Flag Halyard Lounge Chair, the French designers, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, utilized advanced technology to produce the Slow Chair for Vitra. A resilient, precisely shaped knit is stretched like a fitted stocking over the frame of the chair to produce a light, translucent textile membrane. (Courtesy of Vitra)

The most provocative new product at last year's Salone was The Crate, the replica of a traditional wooden wine crate conceived by the British designer, Jasper Morrison for Established & Sons. The 'crateoversy' raged for months, as design buffs argued its pros and cons. Morrison has now produced a Crate-inspired collection of storage boxes, some of which double as tables or beds. (Courtesy of Established & Sons)

At a time when technology is enabling designers to be more inventive than ever, one of the most exciting developments is the application of rapid prototyping technology to industrial production. It produces extraordinarily realistic forms like the writhing corpses in the Fall of the Damned polyamide lampshade designed by the Dutch architect Luc Merx for Materialise.MGX. (Courtesy of Materialise.MGX)

An early contender as the controversy of this year's Salone - for PETA, at least - is the Leather Works chair designed by the Brazilian brothers, Fernando and Humberto Campana, for Edra. Having made past chairs from found objects like fluffy toys and scraps of wood, the Campanas clad this one in the skins of alligators and other reptiles. Moss has already placed an order.An early contender as the controversy of this year's Salone - for PETA, at least - is the Leather Works chair designed by the Brazilian brothers, Fernando and Humberto Campana, for Edra. Having made past chairs from found objects like fluffy toys and scraps of wood, the Campanas clad this one in the skins of alligators and other reptiles. Moss has already placed an order. (Courtesy of Edra)

The latest contemporary design collaboration of the 400 year-old Dutch ceramics company, Royal Tichelaar Makkum, is with the Dutch designer, Dick van Hoff. Combining ceramic with oak, he has developed Work, an elegant neo-rationalist series of table and desk objects. Each object has a practical purpose and, as in this desk lamp, the functional part is made from oak. (Studio Marten Aukes)

At a time when manufacturers are wrestling with the challenge of developing sustainable furniture, Artek is demonstrating the longevity of its products. It has exchanged new versions of the chairs and stools designed in the 1930s by its founder, the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, for the old ones used in schools and kindergartens throughout Finland. It is exhibiting the old ones in Milan. (Courtesy of Artek)

Inspired by Tatami, the Japanese culture of sleep, the Siena bed was designed by the Japanese designer, Naoto Fukasawa, for B&B Italia as a light sleeping platform with a backrest that doubles as a shelf. Fukasawa articulates his neo-rationalist approach to design in Super Normal, an exhibition of objects at La Triennale di Milano, curated with the British designer, Jasper Morrison. (Courtesy of B&B Italia)

To celebrate Charles Eames's centenary, Vitra is introducing a limited edition of the Plywood Elephant children's stool he designed in 1945 with his wife, Ray. It is the latest reissue by Vitra and other European manufacturers, to fulfill the growing interest in design history, and to demonstrate their rich design heritage when competition from new Chinese producers is intensifying. (Courtesy of Vitra)

Whenever the French brothers, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, start a design project, they analyze how it will be used. Often this involves a fundamental reassessment, as it did with Stone, their reinterpretation of a chandelier, for Swarovski's Crystal Palace collection. Powered by batteries and an embedded LED, Stone is free of electrical wires and can be moved to wherever you wish. (Courtesy of Swarovski)

Lire l'article d'Alice Rawsthorn "On eve of Milan fair, much to celebrate", http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/13/arts/design16.php