Biography
Fashion and Product designer Elena Salmistraro lives and works in Milan. She graduated from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 2008 and founded her own practice Alko studio together with architect Angelo Stoli in 2009, where she has been working on architectural and design projects ever since.
Her interests range from fashion to product design and her philosophy focuses particularly on environmental sustainability; her works mainly employ natural materials such as paper, wood, Jacroki, ceramic, glass and fabric.
In 2010 she registered her own fashion and design brand, Alla’s, and took part in the exhibition “L’anima sensibile delle cose” – The sensitive soul of things” – at Triennale Design Museum in Milan.
She has worked as a product designer and artist/illustrator for various companies in the creative industry, such as Okinawa, Zest design, 13Ricrea, Rivaviva, Misuraca&Sammarro, and Alla's, to name just a few.
She was chosen to take part in “The New Italian Design”, a travelling exhibition hosted by Triennale Design Museum in Milan and curated by Silvana Annicchiarico and Andrea Branzi, with stopovers in San Francisco, Santiago de Chile and Cape Town.
Moreover, her works were exposed during “The New Aesthetic Design”, an exhibition at the Shanghai Biennale in 2013 – a review of contemporary Italian design of the 2000s, curated by Silvana Annichiarico for Triennale Design Museum.
In 2013 she designed “Ad Lucem – towards light”, a chair, for the initiative “The thirteen chairs that were never painted in Leonardo’s Last Supper”, a project curated by Ghigos ideas in which 12 other emerging Italian designers took part. The chairs were presented at MAC (Contemporary Art eMuseum) in Lissone. In 2014, she participated in designer group PADIGILIONEITALIA, and her works featured in the collective objects/projects exhibition focusing on the issue of “Mediterranean Dysfunction”, curated by Alberto Zanchetta. Her works have been displayed at the main Italian and international design industry fairs such as Macef (Homi-Milan), Step 09 (Milan), Maison&Objet-Paris, The Milan Furniture Fair (Cosmit-Milan).
