Last week, we announced plans for an online design week called Virtual Milan. Dezeen's founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs explains why this was the wrong thing to do, and what we intend to do about it.
I want to apologise to our Italian friends. On Thursday last week, we announced an idea for a digital design week. We chose to call it Virtual Milan.
We never for one minute intended it to be disrespectful to the city of Milan, its community and its current suffering amid the coronavirus pandemic. We didn't think of it as a competitive move against Salone del Mobile or any of the other Milanese design platforms, but rather as something to support the global design community at this difficult time.
But while the vast majority of the responses we got were positive and supportive, many people in Milan were deeply offended. It quickly became clear that we had got it wrong. We're genuinely sorry about that. It quickly became clear that we had got it wrong
We are learning the hard way as coronavirus rips its way around the world. London right now is where Italy was a couple of weeks ago and where China was in the weeks before that: poised on the edge of darkness.
Having closed the Dezeen offices in both London and New York for the immediate future, and with both cities on the brink of lockdown, we now have a terrible inkling of how Milan has been suffering in recent weeks.
We also feel an even keener responsibility to be an honest and trusted voice for our international audi...