Milano Design Week: the Municipality presents the official program of events

From April 15 to April 21, the Milano Design Week returns to the city: 1,300 events open to the public in Brera, Durini, Statale, 5Vie, Tortona, Isola and new design initiatives in 18 neighborhoods

Milano, 3 April 2024 – On the occasion of the presentation of the Milano Home of Design campaign at Palazzo Giureconsulti, HQ of YesMilano, the City Deputy for Employment and Economic Development Alessia Cappello illustrated the official schedule of the Milano Design Week 2024, anticipating the figures and projects of this year’s edition, which will welcome over 300,000 visitors to the city from April 15 to April 21, in conjunction with Salone del Mobile, the Milano International Furniture Fair.

“The Milano Design Week returns with a dense program of global and inclusive events, capable of interacting with local communities and the urban landscape. It will be a week of exhibitions, presentations and workshops for industry operators and design professionals, but also for anyone willing to explore design in its various forms. A city celebration which will not be limited to the areas that historically created the Design Week, but will also involve new and less central areas, with a view to valorizing all the neighborhoods of the city,” said Ms Cappello, who went on to add: “The Design Week and Salone del Mobil  have contributed over the years to consolidating Milano's positioning as the international home of design, continuously renewing itself also in terms of environmental sustainability. The Design Week’s enduring attractiveness is confirmed by the attendance expected for this year, the development of fruitful relations with buyers and international media, as well as estimates on direct and indirect revenue that will be generated. The Milano Design Week therefore confirms its nature of a prestigious event which is also as an engine of economic and cultural growth for the city".

The Figures of the 2024 Edition

The growth trend of recent years is confirmed, with 182 initiatives (+3.4% compared to the 2023 edition) for a total of 1,326 events open to the public in the city (+10.5% with respect to last year). These numbers are all the more significant if we consider that the city administration has imposed more exacting standards to operators this year to safeguard the coherence and quality of design-related events and limit the commercial use of public space.

Like every year, through a public competition, the Municipality has selected creative projects and cultural initiatives of public interest to redact the official program of the Milano Design Week.

Milano Design Week in the City

Exhibitions, presentations, events and installations open to the public will animate 18 different neighborhoods of the city, each characterized by its own identity and a distinctive functional and esthetic offer. Design talents and enthusiasts, as well as the curious Milanese and the hundreds of thousands of tourists that come to visit the city with design in mind, will be able to explore the whole of Milano, starting from the districts of the city that have historically spawned the Design Week: Brera, 5Vie, Durini, Isola, Statale, Tortona.

Two of last year's new neighborhoods have been confirmed for 2024: Porta Venezia Rainbow District and Monumentale-Chinatown (home of the ADI Design Museum), which this year is enriched by a new itinerary along Via Sarpi which will also touch the Chinese Cultural Center.

In fact, there are design events and installations all across the city: Castello Sforzesco, the Porta Romana District, the Central Station, the San Vittore Prison, the Fashion District, the Bocconi Campus, the streets around the Navigli Canals, as well as the peripheral districts of Nolo, Crescenzago and Barona with projects putting craftsmanship and artisanal talent at the service of the circular economy.

The Design Week in Milano’s Palazzos

This year, too, the Milano Design Week offers citizens and visitors the opportunity to discover the historic buildings of the city, which will open their doors to host design-themed initiatives: from Palazzo Litta, which will host some exhibits of the 5Vie Design District, to Palazzo Bovara and Palazzo Castiglioni which will stage the Material Home and L'Appartamento Spagnolo, respectively, both by Elle Decor. It will also be possible to visit Villa Mozart, thanks to the exhibit Doppia Firma by the Cologni Foundation, and Palazzo Morando, the city museum for the history of fashion, which will host a collection of photographs by Carlo Valsecchi detailing twenty years of the ACPV architectural studio bearing the initials of its founders, Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel.

The former Seminary of the Archbishopric, now rechristened Portrait Milano, will be the seat of AudiHouse of Progress, while GAM, the Milano Gallery of Modern Art, will display the House of the Architect presented by Hearst. Finally, Palazzo Giureconsulti will have open doors for gawkers of Masterly, the Dutch in Milano, while in Sala dei Pilastri (Hall of Pillars) of Castello Sforzesco it will be possible to visit Philippe Starck's installation, Transitions.

Milanese Fashion and the Milano Design Week

Fashion and design will also cross over in the 2024 edition: the Milano Moda Design program is promoted by the Italian Chamber of Fashion and contains the initiatives devoted to the home collections of fashion brands, while Bottega Veneta and Ralph Lauren will erect installations of great visual impact, and Zegna will give new shape to a selection of city newsstands and redesign its showroom in Via Montenapoleone, heart of the Fashion Quadrangle.

Reuse of Abandoned Buildings

After the temporary opening of the Marchiondi Institute in the occasion of last year's Design Week, also for this edition the city administration asked design operators to imagine projects or installations within disused municipal spaces that could be opened to the public.

The proposals received were examined by a commission composed by the Municipality, Milano Triennale, ADI Design Museum and the Polytechnic of Milano which selected two different projects:

- the former Casa dell’Acqua of Via Giacosa, a 1920s building inside Parco Trotter, will host an immersive sensorial installation on the theme of water in the storied halls of this liberty architecture;

- Abandoned retail spaces owned by the Municipality in Cimiano and Niguarda will be regenerated to host the exhibitions of talented young designers. At the end of the Design Week, the spaces will be put up for tender to host proximity shops serving the neighborhood.

Tactical Urbanism

To decongest city traffic and allow better access to events and installations by the public, the Municipality, in collaboration with AMAT mobility agency and in agreement with the main operators in the areas concerned, will implement temporary pedestrian zones informed by the principles of street design and tactical urban planning in the two neighborhoods sporting the greatest concentration of events: Tortona and Brera.

At the end of the Design Week, the street furnishings and implements will be reused for the pedestrianization of the areas surrounding the city's schools and kindergartens.

Priority Themes of the 2024 edition

For the Milano Design Week 2024, the Municipality asked operators to place emphasis on 4 priority themes: participation of young designers; the use of circular and sustainable solutions for the creation, reuse or recycling of displays; maximum inclusiveness and access for people with sensory and motor disabilities; solutions that minimize the use of private cars and encourage the use of public transportation, cycling and shared mobility.

Design Week and Young Designers

54% of the projects included in the 2024 program are aimed at young women and men working in design, to encourage their participation in the Milano Design Week and provide a showcase for emerging talents and their creations. Many are the initiatives in this respect, here we highlight Design Variation by Mosca Partner and the happenings in Via Tortona (Superstudio, Tortona Rocks and Tortona Area Lab), as well as the dazzling events of Porta Venezia Design District and the Isola Design Festival.

At Base Milano, check out budding talent at We Will Design in Base Milano, organized in collaboration with some of the most important design academies in the world including Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art in London.

Two other young projects worth mentioning include original solutions for hospitality and interiors:

- BASE Milano will host an installation on its rooftop dedicated to conviviality, which will also be the temporary home of 20 designers;

- IED in collaboration with the city administration and Milanosport is organizing The Glitch Camp, an urban campsite set up at the Savorelli Sports Center to host free of charge students and designers under 30 arriving in the city for the Design Week.

Sustainability, Circularity, Accessibility

The Milano Design Week of 2024 renews the city’s commitment to environmental and social sustainability which is the lodestar of the municipal administration.

Almost 60% of the design projects included in the program adopt circular solutions, reusing previously employed installation materials.

Among the many proposals dedicated to circularity, there is the Città Miniera (Mining the City) project of Solferino 28, in the historic courtyard of the building hosting the offices of Corriere della Sera, Milano’s and Italy’s main daily newspaper, in an installation created by Mario Cucinella which reproduces a city landscape built out of discarded wooden fruit crates which after the event they will be dismantled and returned to their original function.

In Piazza San Fedele, the designer Nicoletta Gatti proposes Second Life: 10 trees felled by the exceptional storm of July 2023 made available by the Municipality of Milan to be transformed into totemic sculptures by 10 international designers. At the end of the exhibit, the art works will be transferred to the ADI Design Museum and subsequently auctioned to raise money to plant new trees across the city.

Finally, according to what has emerged during the application phase, 33% of the spaces and installations in the program adopt solutions that guarantee full accessibility to people with sensory and motor disabilities.

The Milan Design Week Billboard Campaign

Milano is preparing to welcome visitors arriving for the Milano Design Week with a campaign that will cover the walls and screens of city with a photographic story in 5 shots featuring 45 designers, architects, chefs, researchers, art curators and students living in Milano.

We want that those who arrive here to discover the city during the Design Week are able to feel welcome and at home in a city that presents a clear and authentic collective identity to the world, the Milano made and remade by those who live, work, create, study, do research here. It’s telling that Mayor Beppe Sala wanted to be in one of the photos, signaling that the culture of design is what contemporary Milano is made of. It is an identity and a culture that those who visit and animate the city during the Milano Design Week also become imbued by and part of.

The campaign is the work of Valerio Nico, an under-30 photographer who has worked all over the world and is now based in Milano: 5 collective portraits containing scenes of daily life in locations across the city that are symbolic of Milano’s vocation for design. This is the uniqueness of Milano highlighted in the billboards: the ability to transform iconic places into everyday settings where the Milanese love for style, quality of life and jestful fun is expressed in an interplay of references with the creations of the architects and designers who have shaped Milano’s urban identity. Because, in Milano and in Milano only, being immersed in design is business as usual.

"Today we present Milano of Home of Design, a campaign that carries a clear message: design - considered in its broadest sense - as a powerful vehicle for narrating and promoting the city, capable of strengthening its global positioning and place in the collective imagination as a destination for a trip, a conference, a study or work experience, the start of a business,” says Fiorenza Lipparini, General Director of Milano&Partners.

The guide to Milan Design Week events is available on the website: http://yesmilano.it