Milan Design Week, running every year for a week, is one of the renowned design events that designers, architects, and students await. This year, Milan Design Week 2025, or Salone del Mobile 2025, is set to be open from 8th April to 13th April across various destinations in the City of Milan.
Innovation installations, unique exhibitions, immersive experiences at myriad events, and inspiring talks are all to be featured as a part of the Milan Design Week 2025 across distinctive venues ranging from vibrant design districts to revitalized industrial areas and timeless historic pieces of architecture. This article outlines eight unique installations to look out for in the Milan Design Week this year.
1. All the things we do in bed by Marimekko and Laila Gohar
Thanks to the pandemic, the bed has evolved into a dining table, study space, reading nook, and whatnot. In Milan Week 2025, Finnish design company Marimekko has come together with the New York-based artist Laila Gohar to explore this evolution.
The immersive installation is designed as a bedroom in Teatro Litta in Milan, inviting visitors to take part in the myriad of activities planned throughout the week around the installation, from coffee mornings to movie nights. Fairly, it is one of the design installations this year that even the common public, irrespective of age and background, can connect with!
2. Audi House of Progress by Studio Drift
Studio Drift returns to Milan Design Week almost a decade later with a kinetic luminous installation in the courtyard of the Portrait Milano Hotel.
Designed by the pair of Dutch artists, Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta from Studio Drift, several glowing bulb-like, seed-like, and more appropriately onion-like blobs are anchored to the ground. With long strings like the greens of spring onions rising from the heads of the bulbs anchored to the ground, these elements of the installation sway in the air like the grass in the wind as visitors move past them.
This installation is rooted in nature and rises due to technology fabricated in-house by experts in Studio Drift, including custom motors, sensors, and software. Lonneke Gordijn from Studio Drift says, ‘People that move through the installation affect the bulbs as if they were the wind… We want people to feel that they are a force of nature moving through this environment.’
3. Components of Space by Deltalight
Components of Space by Deltalight is featured as a part of the exhibition titled MoscaPartners Variations in Palazzo Litta during Milan Design Week 2025. The exhibition, initially founded in 2011 by Caterina Mosca and Valerio Castelli, is now organized by MoscaPartners in Palazzo Litta during Milan Design Week 2025 with a theme of ‘Migrations.’
Components of Space is an installation made up of ventilation ducts following architectural grids, giving birth to unique spaces. The installation intends to explore the interaction between space, light, and texture in the Clock Courtyard of the Palazzo Litta.
4. Library of Light by Es Devlin
British designer Es Devlin has designed a dream-like rotating library in the heart of Cortile d’Honore courtyard for the Design fair Salone del Mobile 2025, working with a theme of Thought for Humans this year. The rotating cylindrical structure with a diameter of 18 meters that spins around a statue in the courtyard features 3000 books for reading, a gathering place, and an observatory to appreciate the architecture of the surroundings.
With recorded readings of the books exactly at 8 p.m. (local time), the installation evokes nostalgia, reminding the visitors of their childhood when they sat together to listen to stories. Providing an immersive experience at Pinacoteca di Brera from 7th to 21st April, the Library of Light is installed to create awareness about libraries as ‘vital emergency services’ and ‘urgent care for our ailing ability to see through the eyes of others’ and the need to revisit libraries and encourage reading and the use of physical books to save the ‘societies and species’ from the risk of ‘extinction’ as it’s designer Es Devlin expresses.
5. Making the Invisible Visible by Artist Lachlan Turczan and Google
Following the success of ‘The Shape of Water’ by Google in Milan Design Week 2023, artist Lachlan Turczan has again collaborated with Google to present an installation for the Milan Design Week 2025. Partnering effectively with Google’s Ivy Ross, Turczan has created an immersive light installation also detailing its hardware evolution and process in Garage 21 in Milan.
Ivy Ross explains that she saw an opportunity to depict the phases of new products from inception to sale in the exhibition, as it is this conversion from the abstract to the tangible that creates awe. Aligning with Ross’s statement, titled ‘Making the Invisible Visible’, the magical installation intends to portray light as tangible, something that has a physical form and something that could be touched. In fact, the installation depicts the journey of light from an intangible idea to a touchable matter.
With the help of custom optics, the team ensured that the light beam was concentrated without spreading, diffusing, or scattering, accentuating its solidifying effect. The team has achieved this effect after an intense research period.
6. Source of Pleasure by Lavazza and architect Juliana Lima Vasconcellos
Coffee and architects have a never-ending relationship. Be it students working late at night relying on coffee for energy or young professionals grabbing a coffee to stimulate their minds; the two are inseparable. Milan Week 2025 also sees a collaboration between coffee brand Lavazza and architect Juliana Lima Vasconcellos.
Lavazza and the Brazilian designer have come together to implant a site-specific installation titled ‘Source of Pleasure’ in the heart of the courtyard of Palazzo del Senato from 6th to 13th April 2025 as part of the Milan Week 2025.
Featuring a coffee-brown 18-meter diameter structure, with spiraling pathways ending in a sensorial retreat mimicking a coffee bean, it unveils the 130-year history of Lavazza’s success in inducing its devoted consumers an experience in every drop of Lavazza coffee.
7. Splash by Martin Gallo for Lasvit
Designer Martin Gallo has been commissioned by the Czech glass brand Lasvit to design and exhibit a glass art installation in the ‘Soaked In Light’ exhibition by Lasvit.
The installation captures a still moment of water in motion in glass fragments, earning it the name ‘Splash.’ As an assembly of fused glass pieces molded to echo a splash of water, the installation is lit by overhead ceiling spotlights, accentuating the experience with the interplay of light and shadow, creating ripple-like patterns.
The Installation finds its place in Hall 6, featuring the Eurolace lighting fair, from the 8th to the 13th of April as a part of the Milan Design Week 2025.
8. Willful Wonder by Studio INI for Dezeen and ASUS
An interactive kinetic installation is designed by Studio INI to showcase the Design You Can Feel Collaboration by Dezeen and ASUS, mainly exploring AI, innovative materials, and craftsmanship breakthroughs.
The installation features large, semi-transparent panels composed of aluminum honeycomb and fully recyclable ASUS’s proprietary ceraluminum material that responds to external stimuli. When visitors walk through the central spine, the panels swiftly react to create an undulating effect.
Leveraging AI, the touch sensors on the Edges of the triangular panels pass on the information about visitor interaction to display on an integrated screen. The installation is featured in Galleria Meravigli and is open to the public every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. from 8th April through 13th April.
If you get a chance, visit the Milan Design Week 2025, and let us know your favorite installations and exhibitions that moved you in the comments below.
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