Everything We Could Possibly See in One Day of Milan Design Week
This story is part of Fair Take, our reporting on global design events that looks up close at the newest ideas in fixtures, furnishings, and more.
If you want to really see Milan Design Week, you need a pretty rigid schedule—something I learned last year. Every April, the streets bloom with exhibitions by brands wanting to get in on the action that the main attraction, Salone del Mobile, brings to the city. This year, I did the math and figured I could hit eleven different projects within six and a half hours, as long as I scheduled each appointment 35 minutes apart.
My math was sound. My timeline? Optimistic. But in the eight hours it actually took, we were able to cover a lot of ground. From rug designer Beni’s vivid floor coverings based on the vernacular architecture of Morocco and Italy, to the most recent projects by the descendants of Charles and Ray Eames, to Kelly Wearstler’s collaboration with fashion giant H&M, the projects around town offer a glimpse into how the larger design ecosystem is targeting nostalgia and playing to the domestic, all while pushing for broader audiences. Here’s everything photographer Olga Mai and I saw.
Sophie Lou Jacobsen
Our first stop of the day was a fifth floor apartment in the Città Studi neighborhood, where designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen displayed a collection inspired by the drama of ’70s and ’80s disco. The glassware is studded with Swarovski crystals, the placemats underneath—Jacobsen’s first foray into fabric—are made from a crispy raw silk, and enameled plates make use of copper, used in a way that reminds me of traditional kitchens. The collection could have easily leaned too far into vintage aesthetics, but didn’t, and felt quite refined.
We were lucky to catch Sophie Lou Jacobsen bright and early at the installation, where she walked us through her tableware collection.
Leaning into the sheen of disco, Jacobsen developed a series of enameled copper plates with sun motifs.
A cigarette box is a highlight of the collection, utilizing a contraption that functions like a straw holder at an old diner.
USM + Annabelle Schneider + Snøhetta
This year, Swiss furniture brand USM contributed to the Fuorisalone scene through an installation by artist Annabelle Schneider in collaboration with architecture firm Snøhetta. Set in the courtyard of Fondazione Luigi Rovati, a skeleton of USM joints and metal plates supported a swollen figure made from white ripstop fabric. Four fans at one end kept the form inflated while visitors meandered through both internal and external spaces.
An inflated form filled the voids created by a structure made from USM components.
Inside the fabric room, created by artist Annabelle Schneider in collaboration with architecture firm Snøhetta, USM furniture units were decorated with amorphous cushions wrapped in metallic fabric.
The balance between rigid and fluid was very impressive.
Eames Office + Nanimarquina
In a different courtyard a few neighborhoods over, the Eames Office debuted a collection of rugs with Nanimarquina based on the artwork of Charles and Ray Eames’s daughter, Lucia Eames. The collection spans hand-woven jute pieces in the shape of butterflies to larger rugs that focus on the symmetry of natural forms. The piece that brought us out that day references a specific line drawing that depicts flora and fauna swirling over an open book, with household items stacked beside them.
This rug was based on a line drawing by Lucia Eames. Original scans of the sketches allow us to see the casual nature of the artist’s process. I look forward to seeing the area rug in a more domestic space.
Other rugs from the collection focus on more symmetrical forms, including butterflies and birds. In person, the swirling weave highlights the rug’s impressive hand-woven construction.
Casa Milana + Beni Rugs
Riding the rug wave, Olga and I walked down the block to designer Mario Milana and Gabriella Campagna’s apartment in Brera. The duo, who lead Milan-based creative studio Casa Milana, partnered with Morocco-based rug brand Beni on a new collection of floor coverings. For inspiration, the teams just had to look down: The resulting collaboration of rugs directly references Mario and Gabriella’s flat, where graphic terrazzo floors run throughout each room and remind both teams of their hometowns’ vernacular materials. It’s a perfectly simple origin story that’s bolstered by beautiful construction, all displayed in a real home.
In Mario Milana and Gabriella Campagna’s apartment, original terrazzo floors complemented the designers’ offbeat furniture.
Designer Mario Milana of Casa Milana walked us through his Brera home. The floor lamp to his left produces both directional and ambient light, and is supported by a metal frame.
The first rug designed between Casa Milana and Beni, shown here in white, covered the floor. A star of the current collection hung above it, demonstrating the graphic inspiration the teams gained from the terrazzo underfoot.
Zara
Getting in on the action of Milan Design Week, Zara—notably not Zara Home, a separate company under the same brand—decided to give everyone a break with a faux thermae: Set in a dark room, a series of screens and smoke machines mimicked a body of water framed by a metallic border. Just outside, a loggia offered guests the chance to take in the city’s largest park, Parco Sempione. The placid installation was developed in collaboration with Harry Nuriev’s Crosby Studios, and opened up Milan’s Palazzina Appiani, a Neoclassical building originally designed for Napoleon, his family, and his court. While it might not have been the most daring installation in Milan this week, the experience was a welcome retreat from the brimming Fuorisalone schedule, especially as our fifth of eleven stops.
The loggia outside Palazzina Appiani was littered with silver recliners and ottomans.
The Eames Office + Kettal
Across the park, the Eames Office debuted The Eames Pavilion System. Set in Milan’s Triennale museum, an exhibition titled The Eames Houses explored both Charles and Ray Eames’s bespoke residential projects and their vision for a prefabricated building system that directly references their own famous home in California’s Pacific Palisades. While fans of the Eameses have long been able to engage with their modular designs (take the Eames storage unit, for example) the building system is an opportunity to bring the concepts home at a larger scale through prefab ADUs, office spaces, or even full houses constructed from flat-packed kits of parts. The studio also published a new book with Phaidon that details Charles and Ray’s relationship with the tribulations of residential architecture, and how it led them to the ideals of prefabrication.
Eames Office debuted a new prefab system inside Milan’s Triennale museum. The quality of the materials felt on par with what one would expect from Eames furniture, and it was inspiring to see the similarities to Charles and Ray’s famous Pacific Palisades home.
Much of the furniture the Eameses produced was designed to be modular, from their storage unit’s transmutable panels to the molded plastic chair with swappable legs. Seeing the familiar pieces in the living space drove home the throughline of modularity.
Aesop
After grabbing a quick focaccia and Coke, Olga and I walked over to Santa Maria del Carmine, a Baroque church where Aesop unveiled Aposē, the brand’s first foray into lighting. Guests were asked to wash their hands—a smart brand moment to feature Aesop’s new hand serum—before stepping into the church’s courtyard, where a blocky installation highlighted the lamps’ production process, from the steel foundry that produces the sand-cast brass bases to a factory that executes the large glass shades. At the back, a small staircase led to a sacristy, where architect Rodney Eggleston of March Studio installed 10,000 deadstock bottles, inverted and displayed in an undulating wave across the room, providing smooth plinths and pockets for the trio of lights. So far, only the table lamp is available, and in a limited series of 500 (two of which had sold by the time I chatted with the team). Priced at €2,850, the lights are intended to provide a more indulgent touchpoint with Aesop’s audience rather than offer a new line of business, but the collection and installation felt well thought-out in the larger scheme of non-furniture brands engaging with design week.
The entire installation felt very Aesop, from fabric printed with classical architectural details to large amphora mounted on the courtyard’s walls. As guests walked through the space, various screens highlighted the stages of production behind the Aposē collection.
Architect Rodney Eggleston inverted 10,000 Aesop bottles and applied them to an undulating structure in Santa Maria del Carmine’s sacristy. Aesop’s three lighting designs sat atop, or hovered just above, the amber glass.
Kelly Wearstler + H&M
H&M, who everyone knows for their…affordable…apparel, has been in the home design business since they launched H&M Home in 2009. For its first appearance at design week and first collaboration with a designer, the brand tapped household name Kelly Wearstler for a new collection of furniture and decor. The installation was led by Studio Boum and highlighted a few key pieces throughout Palazzo Acerbi, another Baroque palace that is usually off limits to the public. The pieces included an impressively blocky chair and a fabric lamp with a metal exoskeleton. While the aim of broad appeal tends to hold international brands back from producing the most exciting collections, this one felt nicely developed and in-tune with both parties’ sensibilities.
Upon entering Palazzo Acerbi, guests were first greeted by a wall of stools on a brass base. Intelligent staging by Studio Boum highlighted the calculations behind the angular furniture.
Stepping into the main passage, mirrored plinths elevated the wooden furniture further. Again, impressive layouts carried the forms, but the design was substantial enough to offer a nice contrast with the Baroque interiors.
Modular coffee tables and sofa segments, in combination with a floor lamp, offered a more realistic application of the collection.
Convey
In its fourth year, furniture showcase Convey offered a more organic scene within design week. This year, the collaborative took over a five floor building in the Torre Velasca neighborhood, platforming both emerging designers and established brands. One standout was Joshi Greene, a Los Angeles–based studio that took aim at modernizing Shaker forms. While the inspiration was straightforward, the extrapolations that founders Elora Joshi and Andrew Greene worked into the modular system were perfectly executed, from sleek analog clocks to wall-mounted desks, vases, and mirrors.
The main aspects of Shakerism were communal spaces and shared resources. Those ethoses were on view with wall-mounted rail systems that acted as interior storage. Through aluminum, Joshi Greene extended the flexible form to more static furniture, like a two-legged desk and a flower vase.
A clock by Elora and Andrew plays off one by the Shakers, which had a similar peg-mounted form, though made from wood. Here, along with the material departure, the designers also applied a ledge that allows their version to prop above the peg system, rather than hang below it like its historic counterpart.
During design week in Milan, we see a lot of chairs. One particularly compelling offering came from Tbilisi-based Rooms Studio, which makes use of an austere metal frame and a cape-like backing in both linen and metal. It’s an elegant form made with beautiful materials.
Tucked into a small room in Convey’s venue, Rooms Studio spotlit a few of their offerings, from sleek chairs to angular chess sets to leather draping on pendant lights and shelving.
Alcova – Villa Pestarini
Seeking out more emerging designers, we left Convey for its more established cousin, Alcova, which was spread across the private, rationalist Villa Pestarini and the abandoned Baggio Military Hospital. Villa Pestarini offered a more domestic backdrop to the designs, which populated various corners throughout the home.
Completed in 1939, Franco Albini’s Villa Pestarini has never before been open to the public. The architect’s Canapo Rocking chaise lounge sat in the center of the living room, while auxiliary rooms became galleries for some of the 131 exhibitors at Alcova.
Exhibitors spread across three floors of the private home.
Tucked into a windowsill above a spiral staircase on the second floor, a collection of hand-blown glass pieces by OOG Objects caught the light and our attention. There was a sense of movement within the glassware that was particularly gripping.
OOG Objects’s milky glassware caught light coming through a small window.
Ceramicist Elisa Uberti took over the villa’s bathroom. The figures she installed in the bathtub felt particularly anthropomorphic, reaching toward the window overhead while spouting water.
Elisa Uberti’s La Salle de Bain occupied the villa’s upstairs bathroom.
Alcova – Baggio Military Hospital
A short shuttle ride away, the larger portion of Alcova occupied the abandoned structures of a former military hospital. I found that the most interesting projects stood in the more utilitarian spaces. In the kitchen, we were immediately confronted by industrial appliances, including a large hood suspended over a collection of lamps by Paris-based Baguette Studio. They’re made from a blend of natural waxes, melted and cast in a gyroscopic process that allows for a hollow center.
A large range hood was decorated with ruched fabric, adding an industrial drama to the exhibition.
Baguette Studio lamps echoed the surrounding industrial forms.
Using a gyroscopic mold, the designers are able to craft hollow forms from natural waxes that can be melted down and reshaped later on.
In one of many cavernous rooms below ground, designer Michał Korchowiec’s colorful lamps brought a welcome playfulness to the austere setting. Beyond their cheery color combinations, the layers of each lamp can be swapped out for others, offering a modularity rarely seen in lampshades.
Colorful lamps by Michał Korchowiec in a basement room at the Baggio Military Hospital had colorful components that could be removed or swapped to alter the glow.
At Alcova, lots to see with very little time.
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