Milan Design Week 2025 Preview: Part I

Marrakech design studio LRNCE debuts its Slow Roads furniture collection in this gallery space, a continuation of its fusion of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design. The six-piece collection has been informed by founder Laurence Leenaert’s journey refurbishing Rosemary, her riad in Marrakech, which encouraged her to work on larger-scale pieces for the home: there’s a low table with hand-cut marble mosaic tiles, tufted wool rugs, a carved plaster installation, a cedar cabinet, a stitched chair and zellige-tiled frames.

Normally appointment-only, Bocci’s apartment-showroom opens up for Design Week to celebrate the lighting brand’s 20th anniversary. A special show curated by The Future Perfect’s David Alhadeff will include unseen prototypes and archival pieces – a peek into the creative mind of Bocci’s founder Omer Arbel – as well as the most recent 141 light. The building’s lower level has a more residential feel, where Alhadeff has set off Bocci’s creations with the work of other brands, including Orior, Calico Wallpaper, Christopher Farr and Shore Studios.

A group show featuring a quartet of like-minded brands (hence the name, Fourfold). British lighting brand J Adams & Co will illuminate the space, and is launching three new collections, including Apex, made from kiln-formed glass. It joins three Belgian brands with the same approach to artistry and understated luxury: rugs from Bomat will be underfoot; Bieke Casteleyn brings her sculpturally curvy furniture; and Designs of the Time showcases its avant-garde, nature-inspired textiles.

Alessi has tackled the potentially difficult subject of our final resting place with joy and sensitivity with The Last Pot, a collection of funerary urns created by leading designers at the invitation of Alberto Alessi. Their responses are as varied as you could wish for, perhaps reflecting our highly personal attitudes to ritual, spirituality and our own demise: Naoto Fukasawa’s Last Home is a handcrafted earthenware house, while David Chipperfield’s Tacet is a beautifully pure flattened sphere in silver-plated steel.

Saint Laurent’s creative director Anthony Vaccarello has brought to life four previously unrealised furniture designs by the 20th-century French architect and designer Charlotte Perriand, whose work was admired and collected by Yves Saint Laurent. The pieces – all of which only previously existed as one-offs, prototypes or sketches – date from between 1943 and 1967, and will be available as limited edition, made to order pieces. Pictured is a sofa in oak and linen upholstery, created in 1959 for the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Paris. Pre-book a time slot here.

“Shining a light on how ideas take form” is how Google describes this immersive installation, which marks a fourth time that the tech company has had a standalone presence in Milan. The event is a collaboration between light and water artist Lachlan Turczan and Google’s chief design officer of consumer services Ivy Ross: guests enter through Turczan’s shapeshifting Lucida (I–IV) artwork, in which light ripples through mist, and then beyond, the space is dedicated to Google’s hardware devices, the design approach behind them and how ideas are turned into reality.

After a fair few years of sculptural squish and wabi-sabi wonkiness, purity of form is a recognisable thread running through this year’s Milan Design Week. For Porro – celebrating its centenary – the search for rigour, form and function never went away, and it has coopted the talents several of masters in their field for its latest launches, all of whom push the potential of materials in search of simplicity. Piero Lissoni contributes a glossy metal table, Tablo, with a miraculously long span thanks to hidden reinforcements; while Dordoni Studio’s Twin sideboard in black stained ash and mirror is inspired by the geometry of the constructivist movement of the early 20th century.

Milan’s Studioutte has collaborated with LA-based brand Atelier de Troupe to create a new furniture collection, introduced here, along with a rug by a Studioutte and CC Tapis. Expect some pared-down pieces from Studioutte, including a minimalist sofas and armchairs with frames in metal or lacquered wood; Atelier de Troupe will also be showing new lighting, designed in-house. The show promises an immersive experience “that explores the interplay between presence and absence,” its cinematic nature amplified by art and sculpture curated by Truls Blaasmo.

Lara Bohinc has three new collections launching at Milan Design Week, two of them at Alcova (see above) plus this debut for Italian marble masters Serafini. The Fallen Empire collection draws inspiration from the ruined buildings of lost civilisations, with an interplay of plain and patterned marbles, layered together and with both smooth an irregular edges – all suggesting once-mighty structures that have become ruined over time, revealing their own individual beauty.

Running alongside the main Salone at the Rho fairgrounds, Euroluce is a companion biennial show dedicated to lighting. With more than 300 exhibitors, it brings the best brands together from all corners of the world. Look out for Articolo from Australia, celebrating a decade in business with launches that include Cubo, a family of lights based around blocks of solid glass that act as gentle diffusers; a collaboration between Lladró and Lee Broom, with pendants inspired by cascading rice-paper lanterns but reinterpreted in translucent porcelain; and new collections from the big Italian names such as Artemide and Foscarini.

Showcasing the creativity and ingenuity of Swiss design, House of Switzerland returns for its third year in Milan. This year’s theme is collaboration, with multiple projects displayed across three floors of the century-old institution the Casa degli Artisti. Find the Emerging Talent section on the ground floor, which includes a hand-woven bacterial and linen material developed by researcher Mari Koppanen and textile weaver Estelle Bourdet; while the upper floors are dedicated to Switzerland’s schools of art and design as well as Swisswool, whose new Moïra rug collection is the work of textile artist Claudia Caviezel, made from the wool of the cartoonishly cute Valais Blacknose sheep.

One of Milan Design Week’s highlights is being able to venture inside buildings that you might never have known existed, where the setting becomes an integral part of the narrative. Italian glassmaker 6:AM – one of a new breed of brands reinventing Murano glass for contemporary tastes – has chosen the basement of Piscina Cozzi, a mid-1930s public baths, for Two-Fold Silence, its first solo show. It should make for an immersive experience to view 6:AM works past and present, including a new cuboid lamp collection, idiosyncratically styled as ▢ [quadrato].