Milan Design Week 2025 Preview: Part II

Theatre and stagecraft are recurring themes at this year’s Milan Design Week: accordingly, design gallery Nilufar’s Repertorio show will unfold over five ‘acts’ across its two locations. The first three acts are at Nilufar Depot in Isola, where New Delhi-based Vikram Goyal is showing limited-edition pieces drawing on India’s metalwork heritage, including Mesa consoles made from sculpted brass; and Objects of Common Interest presents Lucid Dreamscape, a landscape of red resin pieces described as a “monochromatic mise-en-scène”. Over at Nilufar’s historic Via della Spiga location, acts four and five unfold, with vintage pieces from American architect and woodworker George Nakashima; and at the adjacent Via Senato, a focus on organic forms and natural materials, including Maximilian Marchesani lighting/sculpture made from twisted branches accented with feathers.

Artemest, the Milan-based online platform for Italian craftsmanship and design, has a good thing going with L’Appartamento: internationally renowned design studios are invited to design a space within a historic building, giving a compelling platform to the extraordinary talent of Artemest’s makers and brands. This year – Artemest’s 10th anniversary – the location is a real architectural treat: Palazzo Donizetti is a 19th-century building normally out of bounds as a private showroom for fashion label Alberta Ferretti. The designers transforming the spaces are 1508 London, Champalimaud Design, Mayer Davis, Nebras Aljoaib, Romanek Design Studio and Simone Haag.

Family-run, artistically led and experimental, Dedar might just be the quintessential Milanese textile brand. This year, it has collaborated with the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation to launch the first in a series of textiles inspired by the work of the visionary Anni Albers, the Bauhaus graduate who did much to redefine woven textiles as fine art in the mid 20th century. The five jacquard fabrics are based on work created between 1936 and 1974, and will be shown in Dedar’s Brera showroom as well as at a special exhibition in the Torre Velasca, Milan’s mushroom-like 1950s tower.

Light, colour and fantasy merge in this glass pavilion in the grounds of Villa Necchi Campiglio – the city’s rationalist architectural jewel. Lighting brand Occhio’s dream-like sensory exploration is a journey of colour that goes from a flowing curtained area with a palette inspired by its Gioia series, in blue, green, red and violet (a way to highlight a new palette of 18 colours available for selected products); to a monochromatic ‘red saloon’ showcasing the Luna series; to a pale-apricot-toned lounge area that plays host to new Coro and Coro Moon luminaires in gleaming gold. 

Event curator MoscaPartners has assembled a global collective at the baroque Palazzo Litta (otherwise home to the Milanese offices of the Italian Ministry of Culture) and the aim is to “express the dialogue between different worlds, places and generations, made possible by the cultural exchange of our globalised age”. Exhibitors include Tactile Baltics, highlighting 21 designers from Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia; the debut collection from Fico, a contemporary furniture brand harnessing the skills of Bangladesh’s artisanal makers; and US lighting brand Thomas Cooper Studio, showing Four on the Floor, a series of experimental floor lights with a distinctly different viewpoint thanks to its varied designer collaborators. A suspended platform of red earth in the courtyard, inviting sensory meditation, is the work of South Korean architect Byoung Soo Cho.

Finnish design brand Marimekko and New York artist Laila Gohar are creating an immersive experience about all the things we do in bed, staged in a theatre foyer that’s part of the Palazzo Litta complex (see also MoscaPartners Variations, above). It’s all in aid of a new capsule collection – of pyjama sets, sleeping masks and bedding, as well as ceramics – that Gohar has created for Marimekko. “Expect the dreamiest, most extraordinary sleeping space you’ve ever seen,” says the brand. “And hop right in.”

Take a deep dive into Dutch design at this group show in a 16th-century building close to Milan’s Duomo. The entire basement floor is taken up with Roots, an exploration of biomaterials by circular design specialist Simone van Es, and there’s more circularity at flooring brand Tarkett’s exploration of waste as a potential resource, with linoleum and carpet tile materials displayed in the various states of their closed-loop journey. Look out for young designer Lucas Zito’s monumental light installation at the foot of the grand staircase, made from 3D-printed PETG. If you’re passing towards the close of the show (2pm on Sunday), that’s when Masterly will distribute over 1,000 orchids as a gesture of gratitude towards its host city.­

Packed full of studios and galleries, the Isola neighbourhood is where you’re most likely to find design’s next big thing. The area has its own umbrella event (now in its ninth year) and this year’s overarching theme is ‘design is human’, focusing on the relationship between people and design. BasicVillage (Via dell’Aprica 12), a former rubber factory, is the central hub, with three curated group shows: at Conscious Objects, find Height Hacks, Lynn Gong’s series of wooden chairs with playful ways of raising or lowering them so that everyone can be comfortable. Open studios include ceramics at Ceramica Ostile (Via Borsieri 41) while Arno Hoogland’s Deus Ex Machina rethinks a traditionally unsustainable material, MDF, with some incredible CNC-carved panels (via Luigi Porro Lambertenghi 3).

Prolific British designer Benjamin Hubert is celebrating 10 years of his design studio, Layer, with a retrospective at the unimpeachably chic lifestyle emporium 10 Corso Como. Past product milestones include Pebble, an affordable coffee machine by Korean brand Kanu and the Vale seating collection, which has a pressed-felt seat and back made from recycled bottles, but there will also be new work on show. The 101010 collection features six prototypes created with past Layer collaborators, with an eye firmly on solving the challenges of tomorrow, including a modular bee home developed by Andreu World and algae-powered oil lamps made by Muuto.

In line with the human-centric approach that is a focus at Milan Design Week – and the industry at large – DesignSingapore Council returns with this show addressing how its country’s designers are addressing societal need. Curated by Tony Chambers, Maria Cristina Didero and Hunn Wai of Lanzavecchia + Wai, it features 14 Singaporean designers, and tells some historical home-grown success stories (from housing, to beer brewed using reclaimed water) but mainly focuses on the future. Eian Siew explores the untapped potential of pneumatics (by using inflatable air bladders as a more sustainable way to secure joinery components, for example), while Olivia Lee’s solar cooker takes a fresh look at a widely used piece of Southeast Asian cookware.