Every two years it accompanies the Milan furniture fair: Euroluce. Once again this year numerous new designs and technical innovations will be on display at the light fair. And no doubt visitors will come across this or that answer to the future of the light bulb.

Artek launcht das 10-Unit System von Shigeru Ban.

Dedon's "outdoor living room" is to feature another outfit. The Special Edition D.D.C. (Dedon Dress Code), which is being presented for the first time this week, includes tartan and cheekily enlarged houndstooth patterns. Naturally woven.

"Moustache" is the name of the new furniture label that Stéphane Arriubergé and Massimiliano Iorio will be launching at the Salone in Milan.

To stop you from completely losing your way in the usual hustle bustle of the fair and in order to give you a first look at the many activities and locations that the town has to offer, Stylepark has put together a list of the various hotspots connected with Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan.

The Saloni are almost upon us: from 22nd to 27th April, the Milan Fairgrounds will play host to the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Euroluce (the International Lighting Exhibition), the International Furnishing Accessories Exhibition and SaloneSatellite, every last centimetre of exhibition space totally sold out.

The time has come around again for the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan to open its doors and for the design world to flock to the northern Italian city. And, as always, the question that's being asked is: who has the most beautiful new things to offer? Here is a small foretaste.

Furniture design is increasingly based on the art of combination. Any number of hybrids are generated from a remix of styles, techniques and cultural patterns, like so many petit fours in a confectioner's window.

What can be created from paper? "Luminaire", the American design platform, invited a team of internationally renowned architects, designers and artists to consider paper as a material and to use it to create a work of art. The proceeds from the auction at Christie's are going to cancer research

Richard Prince"Nurse Hat Chair"

In the past, people everywhere disrespectfully dismissed the furniture as "Swedish brand". Today it is exhibited in a museum, and because IKEA products are inexpensive, they are considered to be democratic design. The exhibition at the Neue Sammlung in Munich traces the history and methods of the successful company from Älmhult.

While it was quite by chance that Haruki Murakami came upon the 100% perfect girl one morning, finding the perfect café in Frankfurt will soon be a reality. This is because very shortly, the café at the Schirn Kunsthalle will shine out in new splendour - and boast a completely new hospitality concept.

David Adjaye"Monoforms, Type IV"

In 1952, Le Corbusier put his concept of a minimal living module on the Côte d'Azur into practice. He built the "cabanon" in the immediate vicinity of Eileen Gray's Villa E1027; it was a tiny structure that barely measures 15 square meters.

Ron Arad"Box in Four Movements"

Neil Armstrong was the first to touch the Moon's, and the Pope kisses it every time he visits a foreign country. By contrast, we seek to simply keep our own two feet on the ground: In the exclusive "Flooring" edition, Stylepark has compiled the most important types of flooring for designing floor space in buildings.

"We want to take up old traditions again, because they have been put to great use," says the young designer Marek Gut from Linz. He and his team have taken up the challenge of applying the parameters of veritable, bourgeois existence to their designs. His commode is a case in point, and what a case!

Arik Levy"Rock mirror"

At the ISH Ross Lovegrove presented his new "Freedom" collection for Turkish baths maker VitrA. We talked to him about the change in bathrooms, biomorphic shapes, fat-free design, the responsibility of a star designer, and design in an age of crisis.

Martino Gamper"A 100 Chairs in 100 Days"

Between 1971 and 1973, when the Wall ran through Germany, divind opinions and pooulations, for a short time one company surmounted the barrier. The legendary "Senftenberg Seating Egg" was designed by Peter Ghyczy in the West, ut produced in the East. The history of a joint project.

At this year's ISH, the "World's Leading Trade Fair for the Bathroom Experience, Building, Energy, Bathroom, Air-Conditioning Technology and Renewable Energies" in Frankfurt the economic crisis did not take centre stage. Visitor and exhibitor numbers almost matched those of the previous year and an upbeat outlook was palpable - almost defying the crisis, as it were.

In terms of its minimalist hard edges and intellectual rigor, the thermal baths that Peter Zumthor designed for Vals, Switzerland, and were completed in 1996, eschew all the wellness clichés and continue to set the standard. Today, there are various other examples of spa architecture that are equally joyful and modern, and avoid the twin pitfalls of the clinical institution and the high-gloss polished hotel spa look.

While once we had spas, these days we have wellness temples. At these oases of wellbeing contemporary man sacrifices his vices on the altar of health. But as the author T.C. Boyle reveals he should not be too ill.

In the last 50 years, the number of one-person households has more than tripled. The German Federal Statistics Office predicts that for the next fifteen years more than half the number of people who live in cities will live alone. Time for a few pieces of furniture for singles.

The current Stylepark Magazine for Product Culture is devoted to the return of craftwork in design.

There are any number of trends, but only one can lead the way: The bathroom is expanding and merging with the bedroom to form one large area of relaxation and recovery. This, however, is no easy design task to be accomplished.

In Germany, you might raise an eyebrow if your host invited you to share a bath with him before dinner. By contrast, in Japan a shared bath in an "onsen" is the norm rather than the exception. A report on a weekend in Tokyo and a European's first encounter with the Japanese bath culture.

ISH in Frankfurt calls itself the world's leading trade fair for the "The Bathroom Experience" as well as for "Building, Energy, Air Conditioning Technology and Renewable Energies". But as wonderful as this sanitary world of 21st-century wellness may seem - our old fears live on and new desires are rising to the surface.

"A bathroom with patina" - only recently that was still a euphemism for mold in the cracks, limescale-encrusted fittings and worn enamel. However, designers have rediscovered the central role of water in the bathroom. And with rain showers and mist generators, materials have returned to the bathroom which people had long considered unpractical and easily watermarked: Copper, bronze, brass, unsealed stone and untreated woods tell stories about use and the past.

They can heal everything, other than a broken heart, or so a Japanese proverb would have it. They are the "onsen", the Japanese term for hot tubs.

It could well become a success story, a place that to date has been missing in Frankfurt: from April 2009 Nykke&Kokki together with Stylepark will be presenting a gastronomic concept on the city's Römerberg, the likes of which have never been seen before: In the café at Schirn Kunsthalle, that in future will go by the name of "Table", changing installations by international designers will be combined with superb cuisine.

What is the purpose of the bathroom or baths? Purification or complete regeneration? And what will the 21st-century bathroom look like? In the second part of our brief cultural history of bathing we move briskly toward the present.

For all those who love what true, good and beautiful: An exhibition devoted to the Belgian record label "Les Disques du Crépuscule" showing in Kunstverein in Cologne.

Different ages, different bathrooms. The way an era shapes bathing rituals and the associated rooms and buildings and fits the bathroom into the cultural world per se sheds light on its essence. At least according to cultural historian Sigfried Giedion, who tells the fascinating tale of the bathroom.