armonie invisibili: design as a threshold between matter and intuiton

In the beating heart of Milan Design Week 2025, 5VIE presents ''armonie invisibili'', an immersive journey exploring those subtle forces that link the visible and the invisible, form and meaning, object and intuition. While beauty is often reduced to aesthetics or consumption, this exhibition explores design as a language of resonance, an echo of hidden balances that shape the way we inhabit the world. Each work on display is more than an object: it is a knot in a web of secret connections, a living architecture of relationships that transcend the tangible.

Harmony is the ability to compose and tune, to create a consonance of voices and forms, to balance materials, volumes and proportions, just as in music simultaneous sounds are combined to create an experience that resonates in the soul. The philosophers of ancient Greece recognised harmony as an essential principle of the world: Heraclitus, in the 6th century B.C., described it as the result of the meeting of opposites, affirming that "what contrasts coincides, and from elements in discord the most beautiful harmony is created". Harmony, then, is not mere symmetry, but the result of a dynamic balance between opposing forces, just as it is in design, where the dialogue between matter and space, fullness and emptiness, structure and fluidity creates unique experiences.

But the most authentic harmony is often invisible, not immediately perceptible to the eye, but only perceived through an understanding of the deep relationships between the elements. Plato, in the Phaedrus, emphasised that harmony is an intelligible principle, a force that binds parts together according to mathematical and proportional relationships, a concept echoed in the thought of the Pythagoreans and taken up by architecture and design in later centuries.

This principle manifests itself with the same force in contemporary design: every form, whether related to the material or its texture, responds to a hidden harmony that determines its emotional and perceptual impact. Just as in the lyre of Philolaus, where the strings are tuned according to precise mathematical proportions, in design each element is interrelated, creating a subtle balance that can be felt even before it is rationally understood.

But this harmony doesn't just belong to artists and designers: it is a universal key that runs through everyone's life and influences every daily gesture, from the choice of an object to the architecture of the environments we inhabit. For those who work in the field of collectable design, understanding and shaping these harmonies means crossing the boundary between object and symbol, between function and poetry, creating pieces that are not just furnishing elements but true sensory and conceptual experiences.

“armonie invisibili” invites us to rediscover design as a bridge between worlds, a tool for seeing beyond, for perceiving the subtle web that connects matter, space and spirit.

For the 2025 edition of Design Week, 5VIE is expanding its exhibition programme with an important innovation: in addition to the historic spaces of Palazzo Correnti in via Cesare Correnti 14 and SIAM in via Santa Marta 18, a special exhibition will be set up in the prestigious Cavallerizze in via Olona 4 at the  National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci This new space, full of charm, will host projects that combine tradition and innovation, consolidating 5VIE's role as a reference point for research and experimentation in design.