Design Week 2026: the installations shaping Milan

Aesop takes part in Design Week with an installation that explores architecture, light and craftsmanship. Titled The Factory of Light, this sensory architecture reflects the way Aesop illuminates every environment and every type of skin. From April 21 to 26, inside the cloister of Santa Maria del Carmine, The Factory of Light - designed by Australian architect Rodney Eggleston, founder of March studio - celebrates the precision of hands that, through craftsmanship, bring light to life. The structure, made with reclaimed scaffolding and trompe-l’œil tarpaulins, reworks materials used in restorations, transforming them into a translucent architecture that evokes an imagined Milan. Inside the installation, the path unfolds through four rooms dedicated to light, among objects and formulations for the home. In the sacristy, an installation composed of 10,000 perfume bottles generates moving reflections, amplified by the Aposē lamps, one of which will be produced in a limited edition.

Cloister and monumental sacristy, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine – Piazza del Carmine 2


A sinistra: © Lauze by ZIMMER
A destra: © Open Volume by RedDuo

Arpa® - together with Broadview Materials brands FENIX®, Formica®, Homapal® and Getacore® - presents the third chapter of the exhibition project curated by Federica Sala. The installation involves six international architecture studios - Marion Mailaender, Parasite 2.0, RedDuo Studio, STORAGEMILANO, Studio GGSV and ZIMMER - in a setup designed by architecture studio (AB)NORMAL. The studios were invited to design six pieces of furniture conceived as domestic micro-architectures. The exhibition highlights the technical qualities and versatility of Arpa® laminates and other Broadview Materials, emphasizing their sensory and tactile dimension: deep surfaces, rich textures, finishes that engage both touch and sight.

Foro Buonaparte 66


Molteni&C, Responsive Nature, Courtesy of Elisa Ossino Studio

Molteni&C presents the Outdoor Collection 2026, curated by Vincent Van Duysen, with the site-specific installation Responsive Nature by Elisa Ossino Studio. Composed of six botanical worlds, each defined by its own architectural structure, the installation unfolds as a sequence of different landscapes, between fantastic and natural environments, where the relationship between human intervention and nature gradually changes. Visitors move through radically different scenarios, each with a strong and immediately recognizable identity, ranging from fantastical environments to natural contexts - from spaces dominated by human intervention to areas where nature progressively regains its supremacy - while a system of screens filters the visitor’s view. The installation develops as a narrative in chapters - a path in which greenery changes language, density, symbols and behavior. A system of partitions frames perspectives, slowing the pace and guiding the visitor between furniture and vegetation.

Garden Senato, Via Senato 14


© ALMA WATER, Sara Ricciardi Studio

ALMA WATER – The Room of the Sea is an installation by Sara Ricciardi Studio that transforms the space into a sound and tactile environment inspired by the liquid dimension of the sea: large suspended fabrics move like waves, creating a fluid and immersive choreography. ALMA WATER is a sound pavilion that evokes the power of the sea. Inside, sea drums become participatory instruments, surfaces to activate together to compose a large concert of waves and tides. Through their movement, visitors create a collective score of deep resonances and vibrations reminiscent of water breaking and retreating on the shore. Each individual action contributes to a shared composition, as in the natural landscape, where every element contributes to the harmony of the whole. The project is a tribute to Sardinia, its primordial and sacred dimension, and the ancestral relationship between body and water.

Via Olona 4


Courtesy of Materia 2.0

Materia 2.0 interprets the theme “Essere Progetto” through an immersive installation composed of twelve moodboards, including two large-scale pieces of four square meters each. Within the materioteca, products, materials, and textures are reworked into a three-dimensional narrative language, transforming each composition into an autonomous display device capable of translating design intuitions into tangible visions of contemporary and future living. Across the 500-square-meter space, the experience unfolds as a layered dialogue between natural, industrial, artisanal, and regenerated materials, further enriched by the introduction of new product categories: technical elements such as handles and windows, reinterpreted as architectural thresholds; traditional materials like plaster and concrete revisited in a contemporary key; polystyrene shaped into unexpected forms; acrylic- and mineral-based composites; surfaces derived from the reuse of textile waste; and lightweight cocciopesto slabs. Completing the experience, a photographic volume of over 300 pages brings together ten years of research on more than 500 producers, positioning itself as a manifesto that weaves together memory and vision, matter and design.


Courtesy of glo

Within the context of Fuorisalone, the courtyard of Palazzo Moscova hosts the installation Y.O.U. Your Own Universe, promoted by glo and created by Numero Cromatico. For the sixth consecutive year participating in the event, and for the fourth as Main Sponsor of the Brera Design District, the brand presents an intervention that brings together art and technology through a participatory approach. The installation is structured around an interactive circular portal, the central element of a space conceived as an open system. In line with the 2026 theme, Be the Project, the work invites the public to engage directly with it, contributing to its activation. Through the use of technology, the experience unfolds differently for each visitor, maintaining a coherent approach with the idea of personalization that also defines the Hilo and Hilo Plus devices.

Palazzo Moscova, via Moscova 18


© Re-campaign

studio mo man tai presents Re-campaign, a traveling chromatic installation marking the entrance to the Cavallerizze of 5VIE. The Eindhoven-based duo transforms large advertising banners, some originally measuring up to 18 × 46 meters, into fifteen vibrant fabric portals. Once designed to cover urban facades and convey commercial messages, the high-resistance prints are cut, recomposed and reassembled into an immersive passage. Fragments of pixels, graphic residues and layered gradients form shifting color fields that respond to light and movement. By transforming promotional surfaces into architectural passages, the installation reconsiders waste as a resource and spectacle as spatial experience, inviting visitors not only to enter an exhibition but to move through a reinvented material narrative.

Via Olona 4

CIMENTO® takes center stage with an installation by Patricia Urquiola inside the Convey Building, a refined late-1950s structure designed by Ottavio Cabiati and Luigi Brambilla. Here, the intervention transforms the concierge and entrance into a continuous space defined by a box entirely made of Cimento. Organic forms made with the new-generation cement compound introduce a soft and fluid dimension, in harmonious contrast with the building’s rational structure. Inside this environment, new surfaces designed by the designer are presented for the first time: a research that takes CIMENTO® beyond the logic of cladding, transforming it into a material that builds space. The installation reflects a continuous dialogue between past and present, between design culture and experimentation.

Convey Building: Via Senatore 10


MoscaPartners Variations 2026, Palazzo Litta, Milano. Metamorphosis in Motion, top view ©️ Lina Ghotmeh

MoscaPartners Variations is the exhibition organized by MoscaPartners, founded by Caterina Mosca and Valerio Castelli in 2011, held at Palazzo Litta during Milan Design Week 2026. This year’s theme, Metamorphosis, explores transformation, change and adaptation. French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh has been selected to create Metamorphosis in Motion, the central installation of MoscaPartners Variations 2026. For Lina Ghotmeh, it is the first outdoor site-specific intervention in Italy: an installation that becomes both the scenographic and conceptual focal point of the event, in dialogue with the architecture of the Courtyard of Honor and with the designers’ projects.

Palazzo Litta, Corso Magenta

Bosa celebrates its 50th anniversary with FLORESTA FUTURISTICA by Matteo Cibic, a striking installation that blooms in the secret garden of Hotel Senato Milano as an enchanted landscape of light, color, water features and bright ceramics. For this important milestone, Matteo Cibic reinvents nature, creating a ceramic vegetal kingdom, fantastical and oversized, engaging all the senses and becoming a symbolic narrative.

Hotel Senato Milano, Via Senato 22


© GROHE SPA Aqua Sanctuary

From April 22 to 26, GROHE will be in the heart of the Brera Design District with GROHE SPA Aqua Sanctuary at the Piccolo Teatro Studio Melato. In just 72 hours after the last performance, GROHE transforms the prestigious theater into a contemporary sanctuary inspired by the philosophy of the luxury brand GROHE SPA: wellness through water. A holistic experience inviting visitors to slow down, regenerate and find balance. Through scenographic partitions, lights, sounds and projections, the space becomes a multisensory stage where material, water and sound interact in a continuous living performance. Three interconnected environments - dedicated to inspiration, care and reflection - guide visitors through a fluid path where design, craftsmanship and water rituals merge. The focus shifts from product to space: a vision in which water becomes an architectural element, a living material and a generative principle.

Piccolo Teatro Studio Melato, Via Rivoli 6


© La casa di Marmo, Margraf

Margraf presents La Casa di Marmo, a new project by Hannes Peer Architecture. The installation, located in the heart of Brera, explores marble as a total architectural element. Set in the underground of a historic villa, it guides visitors through an immersive path where stone becomes structure, surface and atmosphere. The protagonist is Santafiora®, an Italian marble with warm tones that defines the identity of the space. The path unfolds around a central patio, where light and water interact with the material, generating reflections and perceptual variations. A sequence of spaces inspired by the contemporary home creates a coherent and enveloping experience, with marble as the connecting thread. The project results from the collaboration between Hannes Peer’s design vision and Margraf’s technical expertise, translating natural stone into a contemporary expressive language.

Spazio Cernaia, Via Cernaia 1


© Albori, Stark, Courtesy of Stark

Dawn is the threshold where the world is no longer immersed in night and not yet clear like day: a suspension where intuitions take shape. Inspired by this image by Italo Calvino, Stark returns to Castello Sforzesco with ALBORI, an installation that interprets and stages the creative process as a physical and sensory journey. In the Sala dei Pilastri, visitors experience three phases: listening - an immersive soundscape; intuition - the central, generative moment; and composition - where physical materials and digital scenographies interact, transforming collective thought into tangible form.

Sala dei Pilastri - Castello Sforzesco


Keep Your Bubble ©Superstudio

SuperPlayground, at Superstudio Village in Bovisa, opens new perspectives on the contemporary design scene, with a focus on emerging designers, experimentation and social design. The immersive installation Keep Your Bubble by Slovak artist Lousy Auber, made from discarded hot-air balloon fabrics, invites visitors to enter an inflatable and interactive structure reflecting on transformation, reuse and the collective dimension of space.

Superstudio Village, via Michele Pericle Negrotto 59


© Beacon

Piazza San Babila hosts Beacon, the monumental light installation by British designer Lee Broom, created in collaboration with BROKIS. After its debut at the London Design Festival 2025 as one of the festival’s official Landmark Projects, the work begins its international journey from Milan, bringing to the heart of the city a project positioned at the intersection of design, architecture and public art. Composed of a sequence of illuminated vertical glass elements, the work takes the form of a large urban chandelier, a monumental structure that dissolves the disciplinary boundaries between lighting object, architectural construction and sculpture. The modular repetition of the elements, the purity of the geometry, the rhythmic sequence and the use of industrial materials build a rigorous visual grammar.

Piazza San Babila


© Preciosa, Drifting Lights

Preciosa Lighting returns to the Brera Design District with Drifting Lights, a unique immersive installation for Milan Design Week 2026. Sixty suspended glass panels come to life through delicate 3D light mapping, transforming colors and reflections into a calm and contemplative experience. Designed by Michael Vasku and Andreas Klug, the installation shows how contemporary light can shape space, atmosphere and emotions. “Catch the drift” and discover a one-of-a-kind experience.

TEMPESTA Art Gallery, Foro Buonaparte, 68