At Milan Design Week 2026, Molteni&C presents, at its Via Senato 14 space, a poetic and immersive experience featuring the Outdoor Collection 2026, curated by Vincent Van Duysen. With Responsive Nature, the site-specific installation designed by Elisa Ossino Studio, the brand transforms its spaces into a sensory narrative where natural elements and design intertwine in a single, fluid story, creating a project in which nature itself becomes the key to interpreting the entire installation.
The journey unfolds through different botanical worlds, each with its own visual identity and atmosphere. Visitors enter through the Garden of Eden, a colonnaded courtyard that welcomes a primordial, almost mythological landscape. Here, outdoor furnishings – from the Soleva and Chelsea Outdoor collections to the Arc table – emerge like ancient presences, integrated into an ecosystem that feels timeless.
From the structured rigor of Eden, the experience shifts to the spontaneity of the Third Landscape, inspired by the ideas of Gilles Clément. Tall grasses, ivy reclaiming surfaces, and wild shrubs create a garden that celebrates uncultivated space as a reservoir of biodiversity, inviting visitors to slow down and observe how nature reclaims its territory when human intervention recedes.
The rhythm changes in the Water Garden, a circular clearing dominated by a pool of water lilies, lotus flowers, and papyrus. The Club seating by Yabu Pushelberg arranged around the water turns this space into an invitation to contemplation – a meditative interlude that heightens the perception of sound and light.
Next comes the Hortus Botanicus, a contemporary kitchen garden where nature is ordered, measured, and organized according to precise geometries. Aromatic herbs, medicinal plants, and perfectly arranged beds interact with the Helios kitchen and outdoor furnishings, expressing a sense of conviviality rooted in care and connection to the earth.
The journey culminates in the Lunar Garden, a rarefied landscape of silvery foliage and light grasses that capture the glow of ambient light. Here, design – from the Palinfrasca sofa to icons by Gio Ponti – takes on an almost metaphysical quality, suspended in a nocturnal luminosity that seems to come from another world.
Weaving the entire experience together is a soundscape developed with Bang & Olufsen: slowed rustling, droplets, and deep vibrations become “sonic textures,” shaped to give each garden its own acoustic identity. The journey concludes with an immersive video installation – a digital ecosystem that responds to the visitor’s presence, blending body, image, and virtual nature. With Responsive Nature, Molteni&C presents not just an outdoor collection, but an experience that redefines the relationship between built space and the surrounding environment, transforming nature into a central element – a living architecture with which to engage and coexist.
