Lake Como Design Festival, a widespread event bridging history and the contemporary

Como is once again transformed into a city of design. For an entire week, it showcases how architecture and art, product and design, experimentation and creativity are a living part of the territory and its contemporary culture. Until September 21st, the city hosts the Lake Como Design Festival, now in its seventh edition, illuminating Como with exhibitions, site-specific installations, and special projects.

The distinctive feature of the festival is its widespread nature: the city’s historic and symbolic places – from villas to churches, from studios to foundations – become settings to explore on foot, savoring the magical atmosphere of the lake. This identity dialogues perfectly with this year’s theme, “Fragments“, a reflection on fragmentation as an opportunity for rebirth and reconstruction, but also for memory and rediscovery.

Shaping this journey are new voices in international design as well as masters of the past, in a dialogue that unites innovation and memory, tradition and future. This is ideally perceived in the exhibition hosted in Villa del Grumello: the “Fragments of Memory” exhibition showcases archives and special projects involving the heritage of major names in Italian design and historical brands, often reinterpreted through a contemporary lens, in search of new meanings of the past.

Evocative ceramics and engravings by Enzo Cucchi alternate with the dreamlike rugs by Amini inspired by Bruno Munari, the transformable furniture by Vico Magistretti for Campeggi alongside the WonderGlass archives, and also, the warm and rigorous material of Claudia Moreira Salles, the images of Dayanita Singh, the dialogue between Mario Radice and Nanda Vigo, the fabrics by Dedar inspired by the legacy of Anni Albers, the kinetic art of Alberto Marangoni, up to the curated selection by Eredi Marelli and the visual narrative of Archivio Mantero, which exhibits the oldest book kept in its archive: a volume of printed fabrics from 1820.

The fragment not as loss, but as a creative foundation is explored through the works exhibited along the Chilometro della Conoscenza (Kilometer of Knowledge), a green circuit that crosses the park of the Villa and overlooks Lake Como: enclosed in the Contemporary Design Selection, curated by Giovanna Massoni, creations by designers, architects, artisans and artists from various countries in Europe, Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East, tell how what is broken, forgotten or marginal can generate new life, new meanings.

Some examples? Abreham Brioschi creates a seat inspired by traditional Ethiopian headrests, fusing memory and use, symbolism and function; Studio Lilium creates lampshades of hand-pleated paper, enriched with residues of cocoa beans, which release fragrance and earthy color; We Mediterranean: a cultural outpost, a minimum itinerant housing unit that tells of migration, hospitality and the right to dream. A stop on the route is also the Darsena Villa Sucota which hosts the installation “Voices on the Water“, a new chapter in the Paesaggi d’Acqua (Water Landscapes) research curated by Stefano Larotonda and Niccolò Nessi: an immersive experience on the relationship between water and man told through fragments and contributions from experts, thus shining a spotlight on the area of the pre-Alpine lakes north and south of the Alps.

Walking through the city, must-see stops include the former church of San Pietro in Atrio (via Odescalchi) to visit the exhibition “Aldo Rossi. Architecture in Fragments“, curated by Chiara Spangaro and in collaboration with the Aldo Rossi Foundation, which proposes an interpretation of the fragment in the theoretical and architectural work of Aldo Rossi in his practice from the 1960s onwards; followed by the new headquarters of the Ico Parisi Design Archive in via Diaz 11, which presents the first solo show dedicated to the designer, with the exhibition of some pictorial works created by Ico Parisi between the late 1970s and early 1980s.

These large-format paintings are part of the “Edifying Collapses – Tables of Provocation” series, works never before exhibited in the Como area. Finally, Giardino Bellini, in via Bellini 4, hosts the exhibition “Alvaro Molteni. Sketches” which brings together about 50 small and very small format works by the artist that he called “sketches.”

The Lake Como Design Festival also becomes an opportunity to discover some of the city’s most iconic architecture, revealing its rationalist face and the key figure of the architect Giuseppe Terragni, whose studio in via Indipendenza 55 is now open to the public for dedicated visits. Through the “Como Razionalista” tours, it is possible to learn about and explore the most significant works of this movement, accompanied by architects and art historians from the area: among these, the Sant’Elia Kindergarten.

Here, a video installation is set up on the “Piccoli Razionalisti” (Little Rationalists) project, conceived by Wonderlake Como, in collaboration with the Accademia dei Piccoli Artisti (Academy of Little Artists), which in the 2024/25 school year involved over 1400 primary school students from the city and province of Como in a journey to discover Como’s rationalist architecture.

The complete program is available at https://www.lakecomodesignfestival.com/it