Rather than expanding geographically, Milan Design Week focuses on strengthening what has been built in recent years. The 2025 edition will see a redesign of the city center. Milan is rethinking itself starting from its heart, a historic center often overshadowed by emerging areas, but now the new epicenter of design.
Here, showrooms, galleries, courtyards, palaces and new spaces such as the Molteni flagship store in Via Manzoni, the new design street, become undisputed protagonists. A few steps away is Brera, one of the liveliest neighborhoods this week.
And the Porta Venezia Design District, just two years old but already in full ferment, is becoming a ‘gateway to design’ thanks to the monumental Caselli, which are getting a makeover thanks to the artistic intervention of Toiletpaper for Prima Assicurazioni, the area’s main sponsor. The “who goes up, who goes down” exchange is getting faster and faster. Destinations such as Central Station are becoming more discreet and quieter, and events such as the Isola Design Festival are increasingly gaining ground on the map of must-see stops.
However, for a part of the public, especially foreign visitors, the growing number of individual events runs the risk of making Design Week too fragmented and dispersed, to the detriment of its original identity. An issue raised by the protagonists of Milan’s busiest week (+400,000 visitors, at least according to official figures). It is Gisella Borioli, founder of Superstudio Più: «It is not easy to maintain quality when you clash with quantity. Messages get confused, lines get lost, excessive competitiveness is bad,» she comments. While there is a risk of losing the culture and uniqueness of Milan between aperitifs and gadget-hunting, how do you keep the limits in check?
There are also those who have gone beyond the borders: like Alcova, which, in its view of re-design, has chosen to position itself again this year in Varedo, half an hour by train from the center, expanding and taking the collectible design from Villa Borsani and Villa Bagatti Valsecchi to Serre Pasino and the former SNIA industrial plant.
In addition to this event, which was a great success with the public last year, Brutal, a group exhibition celebrating raw collectible design and the fascination of Brutalism, and the group exhibition Good Selection, 61 international designers, will also land in Varedo. Is there a key to renewal in moving away?
