It’s almost Milan Design Week and that can only mean one thing: Your feeds are about to be flooded with swoon-worthy spaces. Now, scrolling through might be all you need to scratch your itch, but if you’re into seeing things in situ, you’ve come to the right place. From April 20 to 26, designers, architects, curators, tastemakers, editors, students and beyond will descend on Milan for what has become one of the most influential weeks in the global design calendar.

However glitzy and glamorous now, the fair’s beginnings were far more modest. In 1961, a group of Italian furniture makers launched Salone del Mobile as a trade fair to promote Italian design abroad. What began as an industry event gradually spilled into the city. By the 1980s, designers and brands started staging their own exhibitions in apartments, palazzos, courtyards and abandoned factories around Milan, creating what is now known as Fuorisalone. Today the two run side by side: the official fair and hundreds of installations scattered across neighborhoods like Brera, Tortona, Porta Venezia and Isola.

The scale can be hard to grasp until you see it in person. More than 300,000 visitors come through the fair alone, and the city transforms into a kind of temporary design laboratory. Luxury fashion houses introduce furniture collections, emerging studios launch their first prototypes and historic buildings that are normally closed suddenly open their doors for a week. With so many exhibitions competing for attention, knowing where to start can feel like a design marathon. Consider this guide your game plan, from A to Z.

6:AM

A 1929 public swimming pool isn’t the most obvious setting for a design exhibition, which is exactly why glass studio 6:AM chose it. You can find its show, Over and Over and Over and Over, inside Piscina Guido Romano (Via Ampère 24), transforming the historic pool complex into a layered environment of glass objects.

The show introduces several new works alongside a limited-edition version of Paysage and Linetta, created with architect Hannes Peer. The experience extends well beyond the installation itself, spilling into the surrounding park and poolside spaces, where a drink or two at the temporary bar run by Vicino Wine Club is a must.

Aesop

Aesop returns to Milan Design Week for the third year in a row with The Factory of Light, an atmospheric installation set inside the cloisters of Santa Maria del Carmine, just steps from the brand’s Brera store. Designed by Australian architect Rodney Eggleston of March Studio, the structure is built from salvaged scaffolding and translucent tarpaulins originally used to cover buildings under restoration, creating a dreamlike architectural landscape within the historic church.

Visitors move through a sequence of rooms exploring the role of light in Aesop’s design philosophy before arriving at a dramatic final installation where 16,000 amber fragrance bottles form an undulating reflective surface. The presentation also marks the debut of Aposē, a trio of lamps designed by Aesop, one of which will be produced as a limited edition.

Ai Wei Wei x Rubelli

At Rubelli’s showroom on Via Fatebenefratelli, Ai Weiwei: About Silk transforms textile into a medium for storytelling, politics and craft. The immersive installation translates one of Ai Weiwei’s most emblematic works into an elaborate silk lampas, woven with metallic threads to recreate motifs that run through the artist’s practice—from surveillance cameras and handcuffs to the now-iconic alpaca symbol of resistance. At the center of the space, a sculptural sofa designed by Ai Weiwei emerges from the same textile, while additional works extend the narrative through further fabric studies drawn from the Rubelli archive.

Alcova

It wouldn’t be Milan Design Week without Alcova. This year, the roaming exhibition expands into two dramatically different sites on the city’s western edge: Villa Pestarini, a rarely opened private residence designed by Italian Rationalist architect Franco Albini, and the sprawling former Baggio Military Hospital. Together they host more than 120 exhibitors spanning emerging studios, established brands and design schools.

At the villa, pieces are in direct dialogue with Albini’s architecture, including a section by Patricia Urquiola for Haworth and Cassina alongside research-driven works by independent designers. A highlight this year is Sten Studio’s The Wedding, a sculptural display staged inside an abandoned chapel that represents the designer’s own ceremony. Across the grounds, expect a week-long landscape of experimentation where furniture, architecture, material and sound spill across an entire neighborhood rather than a single gallery space.

Baccarat

After a four-year absence from Milan Design Week, Baccarat returns with a dramatic new show that reimagines the brand’s iconic crystal through a contemporary lens. Crystal Crypt, conceived by curator Emmanuelle Luciani, draws on references ranging from sacred architecture to mythology, transforming Baccarat’s glass into something closer to cultural artifact than tableware.

The exhibition also introduces several new pieces, including Bethan Laura Wood’s exuberant Mille Fleurs chandelier and new interpretations of the historic Harcourt glassware collection, first introduced in 1841. The presentation marks a significant moment for the 260-year-old maison, positioning heritage craftsmanship within a more experimental design conversation.

Balmaceda

Some of the most memorable Milan Design Week installations happen behind unmarked doors, and Balmaceda makes a great case for it. Hidden inside an apartment in the San Vittore neighborhood, A Letter about Codices presents the new Códices collection through a site-specific installation by artist Luis Úrculo. Rugs, textiles and ceramic vessels highlight the geometry of ancient Mexican architecture—pyramids, reliefs and codices—into contemporary objects. Moving through the rooms feels like an ode to heritage, craft and the ability of visual languages to travel through time.

Bieke Casteleyn x JOV

Belgian design takes center stage at Piazza San Marco 8, where furniture brand Bieke Casteleyn presents In Clover. An Immersive Landscape of Softness., a collection developed with rug company JOV. The exhibition revolves around the clover shape, a recurring motif in the brand’s work that anchors a new collection of tables, mirrors and occasional pieces. Surfaces shift between maple, afrormosia wood, marble, suede leather and high-gloss lacquer, creating a layered environment that feels both tactile and serene. Paired with JOV’s textiles, the show is a must-see during the week.

Capsule Plaza

Capsule Plaza returns for its fourth edition with the same multidisciplinary spirit that has quickly made it one of Milan Design Week’s most energetic platforms. Spread across multiple venues throughout the city, the project blends design with food, performances and a public program that feels closer to a cultural festival than a traditional exhibition. This year also marks the launch of Capsule Issue 5, the platform’s annual magazine dedicated to radical design thinking. Printed in an oversized spiral-bound format, the publication itself reads like an object of design—part editorial project, part collectible artifact.

Casa Laveni

Opening just in time for Milan Design Week, Casa Laveni arrives in Brera as a 30-room boutique hotel set within a restored neoclassical palazzo, positioning itself as both a platform for design and a place to stay. Designed by Delogu Architecture in collaboration with Studio Sacchi Architetti, the property was built in 1911 as the private residence of engineer Giuseppe Laveni, whose work helped shape several of Milan's architectural landmarks.

The preserved façade, original cast-iron columns and decorative cornices anchor the hotel in the city's historic fabric, while the interiors introduce something more dreamlike—sky-blue palettes, cloud-painted ceilings that reinterpret the Italian fresco tradition through a contemporary lens, and sculptural furnishings layered with Carrara marble, bronze fixtures and velvet upholstery. Throughout the week, the space hosts a curated program of shows and events with a rotating lineup of artists, designers and chefs, including collaborations with Crosby Studios as part of the hotel's debut.

Casa Milana x Beni

Tucked inside Mario Milana and Gabriella Campagna’s private residence in Brera, Casa Milana offers a more intimate counterpoint to the week’s larger-scale moments. The home studio, which functions as both a living space and a creative environment, will host a preview of new furniture by Mario Milana alongside capsule collections developed with Moroccan rug brand BENI and Venice-based glassware studio Laguna~B. The presentation reflects the studio’s ongoing exploration of design and lived experience, where objects are shaped as much by material as by ritual, atmosphere and daily life. Visitors are received by appointment throughout the week.

Daft About Draft

Tokyo-based brand Daft about Draft presents a site-specific installation at Teatro Gerolamo, conceived by Japanese architect and designer Taiju Yamashita. Marking the brand’s fourth year participating in Salone, the project explores the relationship between furniture, space and atmosphere, inviting visitors to engage with design through a sensory, spatial narrative. The installation is open from April 20 to 26 at Piazza Cesare Beccaria 8.

David/Nicolas

In the 5VIE district, design studio david/nicolas opens the doors to its Milan project space for the first time with La Boiserie, an exhibit that turns walls into the main architectural event. Located at Via San Maurilio 19, the project introduces a modular system of panels developed after years of research into interior surfaces and material expression. Repeating geometric motifs create rhythm and depth across the space, transforming what might normally be a background element into the main star.

De Troupe x Studioutte

Cinema provides the starting point for Camera Fissa, the latest expression by De Troupe created with Studioutte and textile house Dedar. Borrowing its name from the filmmaking term for a fixed shot, the space at Studioutte (Via Volturno 45) is designed to be experienced from a single central viewpoint. Curtains frame the room like a stage while alabaster surfaces, moiré textiles and illuminated walls create a softly theatrical atmosphere. Low-slung furniture sits against a reflective black floor, giving the entire interior the feeling of a cinematic set frozen mid-scene.

Duravit x Patricia Urquiola

Duravit takes over Gran Meliá Palazzo Cordusio with Balcoon – Scapes, a Patricia Urquiola–designed project that reframes the bathroom as an architectural landscape. Drawing on the Balcoon collection’s distinct geometry and earthy palette, the space moves between layered forms and material contrasts, extending the brand’s design language beyond function. The presentation continues at Via San Gregorio 49/51, where the Duravit showroom highlights new releases and ongoing collaborations, connected by a dedicated shuttle service.

Eames Office

Few names loom as large in modern design as Charles and Ray Eames, and this year the Eames Office returns to Milan with one of its most ambitious public projects in decades. Presented at the Triennale Milano, the exhibition introduces the Eames Pavilion System, a modular architectural concept developed with Spanish manufacturer Kettal that brings the couple’s long-standing vision for prefabricated living into the present.

The exhibition includes full-scale pavilion structures alongside rare archival material, films and newly commissioned models of eight residential projects by the Eameses, several never shown publicly before. The result is part research project, part architectural prototype, and a reminder that the Eames approach to modular living remains surprisingly forward-looking.

Fornasetti

Few Milanese design houses blur the line between fantasy and function quite like Fornasetti, and this year the atelier opens a new chapter with Forever Fornasetti. New Encounters. The project centers on a complete restyling of the flagship store on Corso Venezia, now with a new entrance on Via Senato, reimagined by the design studio Tutto Bene. Inside, visitors will find a series of new collections spanning furniture and objects, including porcelain vases, a theatrical new Palladiana and Arlecchini bar cabinet and a rug collection created with cc-tapis. Plus, Australian florist Simone Gooch will run a temporary flower shop, Fornasetti Fiori by Fjura, for twelve weeks, turning the boutique into an evolving installation of objects and flowers.

Foscarini

At Foscarini’s Spazio Monforte showroom (Corso Monforte 15), the lighting brand turns its attention to an unlikely collaborator: knitwear. Titled Knitted Light, the installation explores how 3D knitting techniques can shape and diffuse light in unexpected ways. Designers Jozeph Forakis and Lorenzo Palmeri each approach the material from different angles. Forakis experiments with unconventional yarns and modified knitting machines to create sculptural volumes, while Palmeri borrows techniques from fashion, transforming flat textile surfaces into three-dimensional forms through cuts and folds that feel almost like textile kirigami. The result reveals how a familiar material can take on an entirely new life when paired with light.

Frette x Tara Bernerd

At the brand's flagship boutique on Via Manzoni, Frette marks a return to table linens with Turning Tables, a collection developed with Creative Design Partner Tara Bernerd. Building on the visual language of their 2025 collaboration, Disrupting Architecture, Bernerd's signature motifs appear as intricate borders on neutral and colored linens, bringing movement and color to Frette's classic tablescape. The presentation also includes a curated edit of entertaining objects—walnut trays with leather inlays, embossed coasters and lacquerware keepsake jars—alongside lighter tonal iterations of Bernerd’s throws and cushions. Both collections are available beginning April 21.

Gachot x Artemest

For their first furniture collection, New York–based design studio GACHOT looked somewhere familiar: their own living room. Debuting during Milan Design Week inside Artemest’s L’Appartamento, the Artemest Collection by GACHOT recreates the couple’s Sutton Place apartment and John Gachot’s studio as the setting for a new series of furniture and objects.

The 36-piece collection reflects the studio’s signature approach to interiors, where restraint and material clarity take precedence over spectacle. Sofas, lamps and small accessories draw on a mix of New York modernism and Italian craftsmanship, offering a quietly confident reminder that good design often comes from refining what already works.

Gaggenau

At Villa Necchi Campiglio, Gaggenau presents Presence, an architectural installation developed with 1zu33. Set within one of Milan’s most iconic modernist homes, the project strips things back to space, material and light, creating a quieter counterpoint to the week’s usual intensity. Alongside the installation, the brand introduces its Vario Cooling Expressive Series, including the Sommelier Sensor, which uses infrared technology to determine the optimal serving temperature for wine, and the Professional Freshness System, designed to create precise microclimates for food preservation. A culinary program developed with three-Michelin-star chef Tohru Nakamura runs throughout, reinforcing the connection between architecture, appliance and ritual.

Garçonnière

Belgian designer Elias Van Orshaegen and interior architect Maarten Van Meerbeeck present Garçonnière, a can’t-miss moment at Via San Maurilio 14. Drawing from the tradition of the garçonnière, once used as a more intimate and expressive counterpart to the formal home, the project guides visitors through the making of a room.

It begins in a deliberately exposed backstage environment where raw materials and structural elements reveal the architecture in progress, before opening into a fully composed interior defined by soft, fabric-clad surfaces that dissolve the rigidity of the space. Within this setting, furniture pieces including desks, lamps, wall works, a daybed and a rug are arranged as distinct presences, functioning both as objects and as actors within the scene, ultimately exploring how interiors can shape narrative, atmosphere and experience.

H&M Home x Kelly Wearstler

High street meets high design as H&M Home makes its Milan Design Week debut in a collaboration with American interior designer Kelly Wearstler. Installed inside Palazzo Acerbi, a rarely opened 17th-century Baroque palace, the presentation offers a first look at pieces from the forthcoming collection launching in September.

The installation previews furniture and objects made from materials like marble, wood, metal and ceramics, marking the first time H&M Home introduces large-scale furniture within a designer partnership. Set against the palace’s frescoed ceilings and dramatic architecture, the project positions the collaboration as a meeting point between accessible design and Wearstler’s distinctly sculptural aesthetic.

Isola Design Festival

In Milan’s Isola neighborhood, the Isola Design Festival marks its tenth edition with TEN: The Evolving Now, a program that reflects both the platform’s roots and how far its community-driven model has come. Centered around Fabbrica Sassetti, with additional venues including Stecca3 and Fondazione Catella, the festival revisits some of its most successful showcase formats while introducing new collaborations, including installations with Designtech and a materials-focused exhibition with Materially. Known for spotlighting emerging studios alongside experimental projects, Isola remains one of the week’s most dynamic districts, where younger designers and independent makers often debut the ideas that later ripple across the broader design scene.

Jil Sander x Apartamento

At Via Luca Beltrami 5, Milan, Reference Library brings together Apartamento and Jil Sander for an exhibition that centers on the act of reading as both object and experience. Sixty books, each selected by a writer, designer, artist or thinker, are presented as a collective portrait of influence and personal reference, shifting the focus from titles themselves to the ideas and memories they carry. The exhibition, designed by studioutte, arranges the books on chrome lecterns under focused pools of light, creating a quiet, contemplative environment that invites visitors to slow down, handle and read. Entry is structured through timed registration, with each visitor given a pair of white gloves to use while engaging with the books, reinforcing the exhibition’s emphasis on care, attention and the physical ritual of reading.

Kohler x Flamingo Estate

In the courtyard of the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Kohler teams up with Flamingo Estate founder Richard Christiansen to create the Flamingo Estate Bathhouse, an exhibition that reframes bathing as both ritual and landscape. Set within a meadow of wildflowers, the installation centers on sculptural pollinator baths cast at Kohler’s historic Wisconsin foundry alongside a new iteration of the brand’s iconic freestanding cast iron tubs, now wrapped in architectural metal shrouds, most notably copper designed to patina over time. Stained glass, botanical elements and enameled cast iron bring the space together into something that feels closer to a contemplative garden than a bathroom showroom.

L’Artisan Parfumeur

For its 50th anniversary, French fragrance house L’Artisan Parfumeur takes over a Milanese apartment on Via Giovanni Lulli 2 with L’Appartement, an exhibition imagined by antique dealer and designer Antoine Billore. The installation feels like a lived-in home, where Billore’s hybrid furniture pieces—somewhere between contemporary design and historical fragment—sit among objects and references drawn from the brand’s poetic olfactory universe. Known for his unconventional approach to antiques, Billore treats the space as a layered narrative where past and present quietly coexist.

La Casa Magica

At Via della Spiga 32, La Casa Magica explores the home as something more symbolic than functional. Curated by Valentina Ciuffi of Studio Vedèt with exhibition design by Space Caviar, the show brings together objects that draw on ritual, belief systems and archetypes of domestic life. Designers including David Aliperti, Flora Lechner and Anita Morvillo contribute works that treat furniture and objects almost like contemporary talismans, pieces meant not only to inhabit a space but to protect or transform it. The exhibition reframes the home as a place of meaning and imagination rather than simply a place to live.

La Double J

With a palette the brand describes as wild elegance, La DoubleJ’s Al Fresco collection translates its signature prints into a series of outdoor pieces shaped by what it calls “p-leisure,” a playful approach to leisure rooted in color, movement and spontaneity. Designed for terraces, gardens and poolside settings, the collection is on view at Via Sant’Andrea 10 as part of Size Matters, an installation within the showroom that also introduces the new line. It includes Baba Poufs, whose soft, rounded forms recall pastries, alongside lightweight folding tables created to pair with the brand’s large printed trays as adaptable side tables.

Conceived as a “Connection Collection,” the line is intended to integrate seamlessly with existing homeware, encouraging a layered, mix-and-match approach while drawing on the rituals of open-air living. Grounded in an Italian instinct to gather, dine and linger outdoors, Al Fresco frames the exterior as a space of its own, defined by conviviality, ease and a sense of occasion.

La Marzocco

At 77 Corso Garibaldi, La Marzocco opens Casa La Marzocco, a 300-square-meter space dedicated to the culture of coffee, seen through the lens of design and hospitality. The installation brings together the brand’s full range, including custom machines by Officine Fratelli Bambi and an expanded color palette for La Marzocco Home, alongside a new collaboration with Dutch design brand Polspotten. There is a strong emphasis on experience, with a working coffee bar curated by Modbar and a program that moves between craft, engineering and ritual. The result feels less like a product showcase and more like a functioning environment where coffee becomes the central design object.

Laboratorio Paravicini

At Via Nerino 8 in Milan’s 5Vie district, Laboratorio Paravicini presents Metalia, a new collaboration with designer Natalia Criado that explores the relationship between ceramic and metal through the ritual of the table. The collection brings together hand-painted ceramic dishes produced in Paravicini’s atelier with a series of metal chargers designed by Criado, translating her sculptural approach into a functional context. The presentation takes the form of an installation titled The Invisible Table, which reinterprets the traditional table setting as a spatial composition, deconstructing it into its essential elements and positioning the objects as sculptural forms. Rather than a conventional dining arrangement, ceramic and steel pieces are placed in dialogue within the space, highlighting material contrast while emphasizing the symbolic and ceremonial qualities of everyday objects.

Lotto Studio x Vesper Voyage

One of the lesser-known moments of the week will happen inside Vesper Milano (Foro Buonaparte 69), where Vesper Voyage by Lotto Studio combines sound, poetry and object design into a live performance. A contemporary electronic musician and poet perform an audio reading around a sculptural music stand created by Berlin’s Lotto Studio. Wrapped in natural rubber and anchored by a cast beeswax relief, the stand functions as both instrument and artwork. After the performance, the piece remains on view alongside a recording of the event.

Marimekko

Finnish design house Marimekko brings a playful burst of color to Milan Design Week with Osteria Fiori di Marimekko, a show that celebrates the brand’s long-standing love affair with florals. Located at Via Ascanio Sforza 75, expect a vibrant social setting with bold textiles, flower-filled terraces, aperitivo bites and a lively courtyard atmosphere complete with daily bocce games.

At the center of the presentation is Kukasta kukkaan, a new hand-painted floral print by designer Erja Hirvi, translated into large-scale fabric installations and a limited series of ceramics available for purchase on site. The activation also nods to Marimekko’s broader floral legacy, tracing the motif back to the house’s iconic prints first introduced in the 1960s.

Miu Miu Literary Club

Miu Miu presents the fourth edition of its Literary Club at the Circolo Filologico Milanese, titled Politics of Desire. Taking place from April 22 to 24, the program explores themes of sexuality, consent and desire through the work of Annie Ernaux and Ama Ata Aidoo. Over two days, conversations, lectures and live performances will bring together an interdisciplinary community of women, before the space opens to the public as a reading room on April 24. Registrations open April 13 on miumiu.com.

Nilufar Grand Hotel

At Nilufar Depot (Viale Lancetti 34), gallery founder Nina Yashar imagines a fictional luxury hotel where design objects take center stage. Titled Nilufar Grand Hotel, the exhibition unfolds as a sequence of guest rooms, each conceived by a different designer including david/nicolas, Filippo Carandini and Allegra Hicks. Within this imagined hospitality setting, furniture and objects become characters in their own right, arranged as if awaiting their next guest. The project also introduces work by emerging studios such as Von Pelt Atelier and Derin Beren Yalcin, continuing Nilufar’s longstanding role as both tastemaker and platform for new voices in collectible design.

Poliform

Rather than exhibiting at Salone del Mobile this year, Poliform is taking over Palazzo Clerici, the 18th-century palace known for its ornate interiors and sweeping frescoed ceilings. The historic setting becomes the backdrop for the unveiling of the brand’s newest collections, presented in dialogue with the architecture of the palazzo. The installation offers a more intimate alternative to the fairgrounds, inviting visitors to experience Poliform’s latest designs in rooms that feel closer to a grand residence than a showroom.

Prada Frames

At the historic complex of Santa Maria delle Grazie, home to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, Prada Frames returns for its fifth edition. The annual symposium curated by research-driven design studio Formafantasma has become one of the most thoughtful programs of Milan Design Week. Titled In Sight, this year’s conversations examine image-making and the growing dominance of representation in contemporary culture, exploring how images operate not only aesthetically but politically and materially. Running April 19–21, the program gathers architects, designers, scholars and cultural thinkers for a series of talks set within one of Milan’s most storied architectural sites.

Range Rover

Range Rover returns to Milan Design Week with a new installation created in collaboration with London and Paris–based Storey Studio, the spatial design practice led by Robert Storey. Building on the momentum of its 2025 debut, the 2026 presentation centers on Range Rover Bespoke, the brand’s pinnacle personalisation service, translating its focus on craftsmanship, modernism and material into an immersive spatial experience. The project reflects Range Rover’s broader ambition to move beyond the automotive world and engage with design as a cultural discipline. Together, the project positions the brand within a wider conversation around luxury, where design, architecture and sensory experience increasingly intersect.

RedDuo

In the Porta Genova district, multidisciplinary studio RedDuo reopens the doors to its original Milan home for RedDuo Galleria, revealing the space in a new configuration created with a group of creative collaborators. Founded by Fabiola di Virgilio and Andrea Rosso, the studio has built a reputation for projects that move fluidly between design, art and architecture, and the refreshed space reflects that hybrid approach. During the week RedDuo will also appear in the ArchiThoughts–ArchiTouch exhibition curated by Federica Sala at the Arpa Industriale / Fenix showroom on Foro Buonaparte, extending the studio’s presence beyond the neighborhood.

Rosewood

Rosewood makes its Milan Design Week debut with an exhibition dedicated to the late Italian designer and thinker Andrea Branzi, one of the founding figures of the Radical Design movement. Installed at Via Carlo de Cristoforis 1, Objects That Speak: A Conversation Continued with Andrea Branzi invites visitors into a contemplative environment centered on Branzi’s delicate paper lamps, many inlaid with maple or bamboo leaves. Curated with Deyan Sudjic, Director Emeritus of the Design Museum, the show pairs Branzi’s work with projects by a new generation of designers collaborating with Rosewood.

Salone Del Mobile

While much of Milan Design Week is spread out across the city, the epicenter of the industry remains Salone del Mobile at Fiera Milano Rho, the massive fairgrounds where the business side of design is front and center. This is where brands debut their newest furniture collections, lighting launches and material innovations, often months before they appear anywhere else. The scale can feel overwhelming, with thousands of exhibitors spread across multiple halls, but it’s also where the pulse of the global design industry is easiest to read. Among the noteworthy booths this year are Gufram, Arper, 4Corners, Neolith, NII and plenty more, each bringing their distinct take on radical Italian design to the fair.

Seletti

At its flagship store on Corso Garibaldi, Italian design provocateur Seletti presents Tools, a new collection developed with building materials distributor Eternoo that turns everyday hardware into playful design objects. Cleaning brushes, construction tools and workshop staples are reimagined as small domestic sculptures, leaning into Seletti’s signature mix of pop humor and irreverence. For the week, the shop transforms into an installation titled Building Design Ltd., where the familiar language of the hardware store is reframed through design. The project also nods to Seletti’s own history, revisiting objects that appeared in the brand’s catalog from the 1960s through the 1990s and bringing them back with a contemporary twist.

SEM

Solid wood takes center stage in CORE, a new furniture collection by architect Hannes Peer presented by SEM–Spotti Edizioni Milano. Installed inside Spotti Milano on Viale Piave 27, the pieces treat wood not as surface decoration but as the structural heart of the design. Tables, cabinets and seating reveal their mass through carved geometric forms and subtle relief details that highlight the grain of the material. Produced in a limited edition, the collection combines digital precision with hand finishing, resulting in furniture that feels monumental.

So-Le Studio x Bottega Ghianda

Jewelry designer Maria Sole Ferragamo expands her creative universe with the first lighting piece from her brand So-Le Studio, presented at Portrait Milano on Via Sant’Andrea 10. Known for sculptural jewelry made from reclaimed leather, Ferragamo now shifts scale from the body to the room. The lamp, developed with the historic Italian woodworking atelier Bottega Ghianda, reflects the same attention to material and form that defines her accessories. Installed inside the Portrait Milano boutique, the project marks a natural evolution for the brand as it moves from object to interior space.

Sophie Lou Jacobsen

Glass designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen brings a little Milanese nightlife into the week with Disco Aperitivo, a new collection inspired by the city’s disco culture of the 1970s and ’80s. The project expands her sculptural glass language into a full table universe that includes lamps, trays, knife rests and serving pieces alongside new glassware. Some pieces join her core production line while others are developed with a Venetian glass workshop, introducing a more artisanal tier to the collection. The result feels like a playful tribute to the rituals of gathering around a table.

Spazio Viruly

At Superattico in the Porta Venezia Design District, Dutch gallery Spazio Viruly presents Unboxing, A Room as Instrument an exhibition bringing together Rotterdam-based designers Matthijs Koerts and Merijn Haenen. Both designers work at the blurred edge of art and product design, often taking apart familiar technologies to understand how they function. Here, the internal mechanics of speakers, lights and other everyday devices are pulled into the open. Coils, membranes, wires and structural elements become the installation itself, transforming what is usually hidden inside an object into a physical landscape of tension, vibration and light.

Tacchini

At Casa Tacchini on Largo Treves 5, Faye Toogood reworks the brand’s Milan space with Material Anthology, a site-specific installation that draws directly from its archives and workshops. Offcuts, samples and raw fragments are assembled into sculptural compositions, shifting the focus toward process and the tactile intelligence of materials rather than finished form. Each room is organized around tonal variations found in marble, timber and other natural elements. Alongside the show, Toogood expands her Butter seating system into new modular pieces, continuing the conversation between experimentation and everyday use.

The Future Perfect x Bocci

Inside Bocci’s Milan residence, The Future Perfect presents Light as Medium, an exhibition curated by founder David Alhadeff that explores the work of Bocci founder Omer Arbel. Located inside the apartment-style gallery, the installation treats light less as a fixture and more as a material in its own right. Showcased across a series of rooms, the staged setting is as aspirational as it is inspirational. Throughout the week the space will host intimate gatherings and conversations, with ample opportunity to mix and mingle with the design jetset.

The Great Design Disaster

Ceramics step into the spotlight at The Great Design Disaster gallery on Via della Moscova 15, where the Athens-based Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery presents Ceramics – Second Edition. Originally staged in Athens in 2018, the exhibition returns in a new format for Milan Design Week, bringing together artists including Vanessa Anastasopoulou, Antonakis and George Hadjimichalis. The show moves fluidly between art and design, demonstrating how clay continues to serve as a medium for experimentation as much as tradition.

Tom Dixon x Cosentino

At Casa Manzoni (Via Gerolamo Morone 1), British designer Tom Dixon teams up with global surfacing company Cosentino for AXIS, a collection exploring how materials shape the spaces we inhabit. The experience takes you through a series of immersive environments, moving from sculptural table landscapes to architectural surface applications built using Cosentino’s newest mineral surface, Éclos. At the center are Dixon-designed tables defined by bold cross-leg structures. The installation ultimately opens into a conversational salon designed for architects, designers and curious visitors to gather and talk about where material innovation might be heading next.

Insieme

Set inside Piscina Cozzi within the Porta Venezia Design District, Insieme is one of the standout exhibitions of the week, marking the debut of a new cultural project by Vanity Fair dedicated to the human stories behind Italian craftsmanship. Curated by Sabato De Sarno, the show shifts the focus away from finished objects and toward the people who make them, bringing together twelve companies including Venini, Rubelli, Fornace Brioni, De Castelli, Bonacina and Classitalia across six material-driven narratives.

The installation traces the gestures, decisions and knowledge that shape each piece, while outside, artist JR presents large-scale portraits of the artisans on the building’s façade as part of his Inside Out project. An original soundtrack by Dumar, composed from sounds recorded in workshops, runs throughout, grounding the exhibition in the rhythms of making.

XL Extralight

Design paradoxes are always fun, and Airstone delivers a good one. Presented at Via Santa Marta 10, the tote bag designed by Luca Nichetto appears dense and stone-like but is made entirely from XL Extralight, an ultra-light material more commonly used in performance footwear. The illusion is deliberate: the object looks heavy but feels almost weightless. Produced in a limited edition and displayed as part of a dedicated installation curated by Nichetto’s studio, the project plays with the gap between perception and reality.