This year's experience of Milan Design Week was shaped by a focus on collaboration and interdisciplinarity. We round up some of the most memorable moments.
Milan’s creative pulse reached a thrilling peak during Design Week 2025. And even now, in the quiet after the crowds, the impact of the week’s most forward-thinking projects continues to shape conversations about the future of design. Across every district and the fair, the message was clear: true innovation happens through fusion — of disciplines, of perspectives, of worlds. If Milan 2025 proved anything, it’s that design’s next chapter will be written together.
At Alcova’s new location, material exploration took center stage, with emerging designers using bio-based materials to explore the delicate intersection of technology and nature. Installations that engaged with organic forms and regenerative practices disrupted conventional ideas of sustainability, pushing the conversation about materials in design beyond the theoretical.
Over at Rossana Orlandi, the focus shifted to experimental manufacturing processes that questioned industry norms, showcasing works that defied traditional production methods in favour of a more hands-on, craft-driven approach. Meanwhile, Nilufar Depot’s exhibitions took a more human-centric direction, featuring work that redefined the relationship between people and their environments. Far from being just a platform for aesthetics, the pieces on display challenged the user to reconsider their physical and emotional interaction with design.
Milan Design Week 2025 was a poignant reminder that the spatial experience of design extends far beyond its material qualities, into the emotional and sensory realms
Collaborations, which have become an essential part of Milan’s DNA, flourished this year with a number of stand-out partnerships. Prada Frames’ annual symposium was a central event curated in tandem with design and research studio Formafantasma to address contemporary design issues through a multidisciplinary lens. Speakers from both creative and technical backgrounds offered fresh perspectives on how design can engage with vision, identity and form. ‘In Transit’, the 2025 edition, offered a prismatic gaze on infrastructure as a dynamic and multifaceted system that enables, restricts and shapes movement, whether of people, goods, data or power.
Another of the standout moments of Milan 2025 came with Es Devlin’s ‘Library of Light’. A truly immersive installation, the project was a poetic fusion of light, architecture and literature. Presented in collaboration with the Pinacoteca di Brera and Milan based publishing house Feltrinelli, Devlin’s conceptual showcase was both a tribute to the written word and a transformative spatial experience. The rotating bookshelves created a stunning visual narrative that invited reflection on the importance of knowledge and culture in shaping our common future. Devlin’s ability to blend storytelling, technology and design created a truly profound moment, one that will likely resonate for years to come.
In the year of Euroluce, other installations continued to blur the lines between art and architecture. Designed by light-and-water artist Lachlan Turzcan, in collaboration with Google’s Chief Design Officer Ivy Ross and her design team, Google presented Making the Invisible Visible, a multisensory installation at Garage 21 that explored the transformation of abstract ideas into tangible experiences. The experience opened with Turczan’s Lucida (I–IV), a series of immersive environments sculpted entirely from light and mist.
Elsewhere, Sou Fujimoto’s ‘Forest of Resonance’ pavilion took visitors on a meditative journey, where the shimmering mirror surfaces invited reflection, both literal and metaphorical. It was a poignant reminder that the spatial experience of design extends far beyond its material qualities, into the emotional and sensory realms.
The dialogues opened through MDW this year point to a future where collaboration is not just a tool but an intrinsic value. In this future, design is not confined to one discipline or medium — it is fluid, interdisciplinary and deeply responsive to the needs of both the planet and its people