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DESIGN WEEK 2024: Isola - Porta Nuova
Discover the events not to be missed
In recent years, Isola has quickly become one of the trendiest neighbourhoods in Milano. With art galleries, street art, artisan workshops and a huge variety of bars to choose from, it is a vibrant destination that shouldn’t be overlooked.
This is especially true during Milano Design Week, when it becomes the location for its very own set of installations, exhibitions and pop-up stores.
The Isola Design Festival 2024 will showcase the work of artisans, designers and international architectural studios in over 40 different sites. Amongst these, three hubs will be making their Milano Design Week debuts: Lampo Milano, WAO PL7 and Stecca 3.0. Together, and in their own unique way, they will be imagining how design and new craftsmanship will shape our future and that of our planet.
Amongst the latest venues to join the Design Week line-up is one of the city’s most recent and exciting urban redevelopment projects. Lampo Milano was conceived out of a historic railway yard, the Scalo Farini, and is currently providing spaces for coworking, cultural events, workshops and pop-up design stores.
It will also host several exhibitions. Amongst these, Isola Design Gallery will showcase collectible design items, crafted by independent artists, displayed in a way so that they play with colours, lighting and textures, in juxtaposition with the building’s brutalist architecture. T
he venue will host Enhance - Design for social impact, curated by Juan Torres for DesignWanted, featuring projects that have a positive impact on the environment, one of these being an ingenious mechanism that extracts drinking water from fog.
The second exhibition, Is One Life Enough? is dedicated to circular design products made with sustainable materials. The exhibition itself has been set up with almost zero environmental impact, using recycled egg cartons as bases for its pedestals.
Free entry.
A convivial coworking space will transform itself into an exhibition centre and meeting place for visitors, designers and architectural studios from all over the world. Every room and space will feature its own studio or project.
This includes the underground parking lot, for example, which will be hosting Disclosure: Design Studios Unveiled. Various design studios will recreate their own ateliers in each temporary space to unveil their creative processes to the public. The building will also host an immersive augmented reality experience, The Hunt by Architecture Hunter, which will feature nine different studios, from Marcio Kogan to Kengo Kuma, in their interpretation of the ‘architect’s refuge’.
While you’re in the area, make sure to visit Galleria Bonelli when it hosts two exhibitions: Anatolia and Ithra, Routes to Roots, a journey through design from the Middle East and North Africa.
Free entry.
The third hub of this year’s Isola Design Festival, situated at the foot of the Bosco Verticale, is the cultural centre Stecca 3.0.
Here, an array of fascinating public talks and workshops by local and international designers, artists, institutions and experts will be held under the theme of ‘Crafting Dialogues’.
Amongst the venues’ many projects, you’ll find an imagined futuristic shop, in which your purchases help the environment, rather than harming it. With New Store, the Nieuwe Instituut, National Museum and Dutch Institute for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture have designed an experimental space in which to practise alternative forms of transactions. In the store, you'll find hairdresser Alberto Fucci, the sustainable yarn producer Human Material Loop and the designer Woo Jin. You can even book yourself a free professional haircut by taking part in the ‘We need your hair’ project, taking place at Stecca 3.0.
Interni will celebrate 70 years of its magazine's publication with INTERNI CROSS VISION. This event will primarily take place in the Università degli Studi di Milano’s courtyards, but will also extend to other locations across the city.
Among them is the Urban UP | Unipol building on Via De Castilla. Here, Studio Azzurro, by studying the stars through the lens of ancient astronomers, will reflect on the importance of considering the protection of air quality when developing urban spaces and their policies.
Free entry.
For the second year running, Kia, in collaboration with ZERO, presents Opposites United: a cultural and musical programme dedicated to deciphering the contradictions of our times through art and design, philosophy and science, music and clubbing.
Every day, a free exhibition will be displayed, featuring works by Sissel Tolaas, Riccardo Benassi, Anna Galtarossa and the collective Led Pulse. It will also feature a series of fascinating talks and performances with international guests and artists, engaging in an open dialogue seeking the necessary tools to navigate the complexity of our time.
Exhibition: Free Entry. Talks and performances: Free Entry upon registration.
