Milan Design Week is no longer about design. To understand where it is going requires competencies that those who write about chairs and lamps simply do not possess. It is no longer merely an event devoted to design, but a large-scale phenomenon that affects the economy of an entire city. It is the spearhead of a cultural programme that Milan has now structured into themed weeks: art, fashion, design, music… (there is even a Pet Week, dedicated to domestic animals). Layer all this onto the turbulence of the global scenario and the result is vertiginous. To address the issue, we gathered voices from those working within the system and those observing and studying it from its margins.
On one side, Annalisa Rosso, Editorial Director and Cultural Events Advisor of the Salone del Mobile, alongside Valentina Ciuffi and Joseph Grima, founders of Alcova. On the other, Bertram Niessen, urban sociologist, author of Abitare il vortice and scientific director of cheFare, an agency for cultural transformation. Let us begin at the system’s core. The Salone del Mobile is undergoing a profound redefinition. Some of its most representative companies have gradually shifted their centre of gravity from the fairgrounds to the city: last year it was the turn of Molteni & C., among the founders of the event in 1961, which left Rho for a Liberty-style building on Via Manzoni. Before them, Cassina, Giorgetti and other historic brands had made the same move. At the same time, this “diaspora of design” is reassembling elsewhere: in Riyadh, where thirty-five Italian companies have joined forces under the Salone’s own umbrella. The zero edition – Red in Progress, held in the Saudi capital’s Financial District at the end of 2025 – anticipated the first full edition, scheduled (one hopes) for November 2026. Among them were the very brands mentioned above, along with others that had already left the halls of Rho. The Salone, in short, seems poised to remain a reference point for the prestige of Made in Italy design – simply no longer during Design Week.
It is within this transformation that Salone Contract must be understood, one of the most significant moves of recent years. More than a new section, it is an attempt to read a market in which value no longer lies solely in the individual product, but in the capacity to integrate systems, expertise, data and services. “Through extensive travel – India, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin, Shanghai, Riyadh – we have become acutely aware of this shift. To simplify: we have moved from seeking only old-school dealers to engaging with other interlocutors as well – developers, major architecture firms, hotel chains… The Salone will be able to become the platform for this new model too,” says Annalisa Rosso. The project’s masterplan is signed by Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten of OMA: its structured debut is scheduled for 2027, but it will begin to take shape already in 2026, with an in-depth forum, a thematic path within the fair, and a targeted invitation programme for international professionals in contract and hospitality. At the other end of the spectrum, this year also sees the debut of Salone Raritas: a curated space dedicated to unique pieces, limited editions and high craftsmanship, designed by Formafantasma. They may seem distant, yet Rosso reads them as complementary: “Raritas and the broader Salone Contract project are in fact symmetrical, two sides of the same coin: a fair that is no longer simply what we once knew. Research has entered, and so has a very strong internationalisation.”
The point of contact lies precisely in the relationship between research and market: “There is space for these hyper-muscular sectors, which often lack the time – or perhaps the expertise – to approach research. On the other hand, research is always seeking new economic outlets in order to survive.” One is reminded of a passage from Il design. Storia e controstoria by Andrea Branzi – currently celebrated at the Triennale with a monographic exhibition – which already twenty years ago foresaw the coexistence of serial production, unique pieces and mass customisation: “We can equally observe that the distinction between industrial and artisanal technologies, perhaps valid until the 1970s, no longer makes sense today. Craft is an integral part of industrial cycles and the globalised market, where high technology, hand-made production, one-offs and diversified series coexist on equal terms: all now belong to an industrial civilisation without true alternatives, in which former technological boundaries have blurred or disappeared.” What can one add? Perhaps this year we may write a new paragraph in that history.
If the Salone is reinventing itself, the Fuorisalone is becoming something else entirely. A report published at the end of 2025 by Mr Lawrence – a strategic consultancy co-founded by Rosso – captures a now evident transformation: “Fashion and automotive for some years already, but now also beauty and food & beverage: sectors once at the margins of Milan’s week are now undisputed protagonists. Brands such as Glo, Aesop, Lavazza, CIF, Chiquita – with no direct connection to furniture – have created spectacular installations capable of attracting thousands of visitors.” The goal of these players is engagement, both physical and social. The most scenographic installations are often those least tied to product design, yet they are also the most visited. I admit to having contributed to the phenomenon: I have found myself writing pieces such as “the 10 most Instagrammable installations not to be missed”, attempting to maintain a critical tone that ultimately fed the same logic. The question, at this point, is inevitable: is the Fuorisalone still design week, or is it becoming something larger – and more diffuse – in which design risks being little more than a frame? Is this a drift, or a new opportunity? What emerges is an increasingly sharp polarisation. On one side, experience-driven projects – perception, atmosphere, immersive narrative; on the other, those in which object and design remain central, enhanced by rigorous storytelling and direct professional exchange. This division is mirrored in the audience. “Increasingly evident is the distance – not only physical but symbolic – between professionals and enthusiasts,” writes Mr Lawrence. “The former frequent showrooms, talks and curated presentations; the latter are willing to queue for immersive installations, free-entry events, or the gadget of the moment. Two different publics, with different rhythms and expectations. And perhaps two parallel Design Weeks.”
If two parallel Design Weeks truly exist, Alcova attempts to safeguard the more fragile one. The itinerant platform founded in 2018 by Ciuffi and Grima has become a reference point for contemporary design, each year seeking a delicate balance between emerging studios, established names, craftsmanship, galleries, cultural institutions and brands of varying scale – while maintaining a consistently high standard, the result of the founders’ shared vision and complementarity. “We continue to bring an ingredient that we believe is fundamental in making Design Week a place of discovery and research,” Ciuffi explains. The pressures, however, are considerable: growth, audience management, economic sustainability – not to mention the logistical and bureaucratic challenges of working each year with new locations, often abandoned buildings that must be secured and made accessible. Grima is well aware of this: “We do not want to become a halfway house between a professional fair and a village festival. We must be very disciplined about this.” The risk, after all, concerns not only Alcova but the entire ecosystem: “Like any phenomenon that tends to grow, the curve is undeniably rising on many fronts: audiences, major brand investment, hotel prices. It is a dynamic that bears all the hallmarks of a bubble. We know how bubbles end, and it would be a pity, because design is becoming ever more important in the contemporary world. We must be far-sighted and think in the medium to long term, not merely chase the numbers of a single edition.” What Ciuffi and Grima call “local techno-craft” – a new generation of designers replacing mass production with research, self-production and small-scale technologies – is precisely what Alcova seeks to promote.
And it is perhaps the most valuable ingredient that Design Week risks losing, squeezed between the budgets of major brands and the costs of an increasingly inaccessible Milan. It is precisely on accessibility – and more broadly on the impact that Design Week has on the city – that Bertram Niessen shifts the focus. For the urban sociologist and scientific director of cheFare, the transformations of Milan’s week must be framed within a much broader context: “The fact that Milan has completely shifted its modes of production – from a city of services and advanced tertiary sectors to a city of events – has changed the very nature of Design Week. It must be read alongside the phase inaugurated by Expo and continued with the Olympic system: the nature of value production in Milan has changed.” The consequences are tangible: “The city has filled with negative externalities. There is the issue of the housing crisis, with apartments purchased as investments and placed on short-term rental platforms. There is the exponential rise in tourist flows, because before Expo Milan was not a particularly prominent tourist destination: today it is among the leading cities in Italy, and the entire economy has shifted in that direction. In this context, Design Week becomes the moment when stress concentrates: transport systems collapse, queues are everywhere and, above all, the perceived return for residents remains rather low.”
There is also a rarely addressed issue: the environmental and semiotic sustainability of the event. “Design Week has monstrously low levels of sustainability: it produces an enormous amount of waste. And there is the question of semiotic pollution: hundreds of thousands of people put the city on display on social networks, and we now know this is not necessarily a positive thing. It tends to drive forms of hit-and-run tourism.” Niessen saves the most uncomfortable point for last: “I find it a very poor indicator that the week has been scheduled over April 25, anniversary of the Liberation of Italy (WW II). In a city currently witnessing a revival of social movements after more than ten years, I am not sure whether the system’s actors realise how negatively this is perceived.” It is difficult to disagree. April 25 is a date deeply felt in Milan, and its overlap with Design Week suggests that the civic impact of the event still requires serious reflection. (A suggestion to readers: that day, skip the showrooms. Join the demonstration.) We spoke of Branzi and that new paragraph to be written. What emerges from these conversations is that the history of design is not written solely through objects, materials and technologies, but also – perhaps above all – through the choices we make about how to organise, promote and render accessible its most important manifestation. That paragraph will not write itself: it is up to all those who inhabit, fund, narrate and consume this system.
