Lina Ghotmeh's installation takes center stage at MoscaPartners Variations 2026

From April 21 to 26, 2026, on the occasion of Milan Design Week, Lina Ghotmeh will be the protagonist of the intervention in the Cortile d’Onore of Palazzo Litta. The French-Lebanese architect has been selected by MoscaPartners to design the central installation of MoscaPartners Variations 2026, the group exhibition that each year transforms the historic Baroque palace on Corso Magenta into a laboratory for contemporary design culture.
For Ghotmeh, this marks her first outdoor site-specific project in Italy. The installation will serve as the scenic and conceptual core of the entire exhibition, entering into dialogue with the architecture of the courtyard and with the projects by designers, creatives, and companies curated by Caterina Mosca and her team. The work will offer a reflection on contemporary architectural research, interpreting this year’s theme, Metamorphosis, as a process of transformation, stratification, and attentive listening to place.
Once again, the courtyard of Palazzo Litta takes center stage during Milan Design Week, continuing the vision of Caterina Mosca and Valerio Castelli, who in 2014 rediscovered the potential of this extraordinary space and transformed it into one of the symbolic venues of the Fuorisalone. Year after year, the courtyard has been renewed through projects that combine poetry, research, and experimentation.


Lina Ghotmeh a Palazzo Litta ©Emanuele Cremaschi

Born in Beirut in the 1980s, Lina Ghotmeh has developed an architectural approach she defines as an “Archaeology of the Future”: a method that weaves together memory, landscape, and space, deeply influenced by the cultural and historical context of her city of origin. After studying at the American University of Beirut and completing her education at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris—where she also taught—Ghotmeh established a sensitive yet rigorous architectural vision, capable of merging spatial awareness with expressive strength. Her Paris-based practice, Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture, is internationally recognized for its interdisciplinary approach, combining historical research, perceptive observation, and material experimentation. Her projects, widely published and exhibited in prestigious contexts such as the Venice Biennale, MAXXI in Rome, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the Danish Architecture Center, reflect a practice deeply engaged with the layered nature of place. Recent milestones include her appointment as lead architect for the renovation of the Western Range of the British Museum, her inclusion in the TIME100 Next 2025 list, and the Gold Award for Best Architecture and Landscape for the Bahrain Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka.

At MoscaPartners Variations, memory and transformation will once again be central themes. Ghotmeh interprets Metamorphosis as “an architectural journey in which movement and memory work together to reveal layered identities within a single space.”
“In my intervention at Palazzo Litta, I draw on the richness of the Baroque courtyard and its ability to choreograph movement and perception,” says Lina Ghotmeh. “Metamorphosis emerges as an architectural journey in which a single space unfolds multiple identities. The pavilion listens to the site’s history, transforming it through subtle shifts and layered experiences, in line with an Archaeology of the Future that amplifies memory while opening up new spatial possibilities.”

Palazzo Litta ©Angelica Carillo

Through a sequence of narratives, dialogues, and perspectives unfolding across the rooms of Palazzo Litta—an outstanding example of Lombard Baroque architecture and today home to offices of the Italian Ministry of Culture—MoscaPartners Variations 2026 explores the theme of Metamorphosis as a form of transformation driven by research, the development of new materials, and contemporary technologies. This transformation also encompasses practices of recycling and upcycling, inviting the design world to interpret present-day scenarios while imagining future ones.

At the heart of the exhibition remains the human being, with their needs and desires, while the focus inevitably expands to include our relationship with the planet, its resources, and the ways in which we interact with the environment—building a virtuous connection between individuals, space, and nature. Metamorphosis thus becomes an exploration of change, adaptation, and transformation, leading to new formal, identity-based, and communicative expressions for products and brands.