Tortona Design Week 2026

THINKING BETTER, Look back to Shape the Future

Materials, memory, and new design visions: at Tortona Design Week 2026, design looks to the past to build the future, through immersive installations, evolved mobility, and new ways of living.

Where design rethinks its future

The Tortona Design District is preparing to host a new edition of Tortona Design Week, which from April 20 to 26, 2026 will transform the neighborhood into an international hub of experimentation and innovation.

With the theme “THINKING BETTER, Look Back to Shape the Future,” the event invites participants to reinterpret the past of design as a conscious design act, combining reimagined craftsmanship, sustainable technologies, and a renewed focus on people.

TDW 2026 takes shape as a dynamic laboratory where design becomes a tool to question the present and build new perspectives, through a continuous dialogue between memory, innovation, and design culture.

Projects that interpret our vision

At the heart of this design reflection, several projects will interpret the Thinking Better theme, showcasing the most compelling evolutions in contemporary design.

The new Geberit Experience Center will take center stage with the event Flow. Form. Function., featuring the installation RŌS, created by atelier oï. It makes the flow of water visible through a choreography of steel springs, revealing the hidden dimension of water systems and transforming it into a design experience.

Konzepthaus returns with Haus of Automotive, an international platform dedicated to the future of mobility. Key moments include the CMF Conference and the Lighting, UX & Brand Conference, alongside Partner Days and the project “IN PROGRESS” by Lotus, which presents design as a continuously evolving process.

Barton Perreira makes its debut at Tortona Design Week with an installation in collaboration with Laurent Badier Studio Art & Industry— a sculptural environment that brings together eyewear, materials, and contemporary design through Plexiglas and recycled PVC.

Hyundai presents Unfold Stories – From Paper to Steel and unveils the world premiere of IONIQ 3, narrating the creative process that transforms an idea into form through surfaces, materials, and design vision.

Toyota Material Handling Europe presents It’s Just Forklifts, an exhibition that reinterprets forklifts as design objects, blending heritage, innovation, and new concepts in sustainability and AI-driven intralogistics.

Color Design Lechler introduces The Way of Sportin’ Life, a project that transforms the world of sports into a language for living spaces, exploring how color and finishes can reflect different ways of experiencing movement within the home.

A network of creativity and innovation

Tortona Design Week 2026 is a crossroads of creativity, innovation, and research, where industrial design, mobility, art, and material experimentation come together to shape new narratives of the contemporary world.

Within this context stands a project strongly promoted by Torneria Tortona, a long-standing event venue within the district: Corpografia – Paesaggio di Donna, by Sara Ricciardi Studio. This installation reinterprets the female body, transforming it into an archipelago of organic forms conceived as a place for rest and hospitality. The body emerges as an urban and symbolic geography, expressed in a shocking pink that evokes the revolutionary strength of Elsa Schiaparelli. Threshold and passage, the body is no longer a boundary but a welcoming architecture, a public gesture, a shared space.

Completing the exhibition lineup are also Urban Jungle; Milaaya Interiors; MEISDEL; l’hotel nhow Milano; Lexus; A.I.R.; Switzerland Global Enterprise; Hisense; MEDUM; Rafa Lanfranco Concept Store; DUXIANA; IN BETWEEN; Plenitude; Faema; Tortona Lab; Zeekr; Kellogg's Extra; Zip Zone Events.

Design less, design better

Design is no longer just form and function, but choice, responsibility, and cultural vision. At Tortona Design Week 2026, the future is not built solely by looking forward, but by reinterpreting what has been in order to better design what will be.

Looking back thus becomes a radical act: choosing what to preserve, what to transform, and how to imagine the next step in design.

Tortona Design Week is organized in collaboration with Double Malt, an integrated communication agency that, for the fourth consecutive year, curates its communication strategy, translating the concept into narrative and identity.