01.
“Be the Project” is the theme chosen for Fuorisalone 2026 — an expression that embraces two profound meanings. On one hand, the human being is seen as an active agent of change, a bearer of vision, desire, and responsibility; on the other, the project — and the act of designing—is understood as a continuously evolving process, capable of shaping and redefining the relationships between people, objects, and the environment.
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The theme “Be the Project” is also an invitation to recognize oneself in the process of becoming.
Not as a finished form, but as a process that listens. Not as a static identity, but one in transformation.
Design is not only what we build. It is what builds us — through time, through our bodies, and through our relationships
with the world. Today, this world includes new intelligences — not just human, but artificial, distributed, and non-linear.
Artificial intelligence is not an alternative, but an otherness. A presence that makes us question ourselves, amplifies us, and challenges us.
“Be the Project” also means inhabiting this relationship — with learning machines, with co-creating algorithms,
with systems that defy our established categories of thought.
To design is not only to create, it is to enter into relation with what we do not fully understand.
With what thinks differently from us. With what has no voice, yet processes.
In a historical moment where everything is changing rapidly, Fuorisalone 2026 invites us to rediscover the project as a profound and responsible experience. A return to design thinking and action, to reaffirm design as a form of knowledge capable of telling stories of minds, cultures, and materials. And of imagining a more sustainable, inclusive, and conscious future.
“BEING PROJECT” is thus a way of being and acting: a conscious commitment that becomes a living narrative of hands, materials, and stories that intertwine and shape our relationship with the world.