The Porta Venezia Design District, launched during the 2023 edition of Milan Design Week, is one of the youngest districts at the annual design festival. Seated in Porta Venezia and considered “Milan’s most cosmopolitan, inclusive and rebellious neighbourhoods”, the district highlights and celebrates the area’s diverse and contemporary character while also promoting a more revolutionary vision of design. At Milan Design Week 2025, scheduled to take place from April 7 – 13, 2025, the Porta Venezia Design District, with STIR as a media partner, presents its faceted programming under its title, No Boundaries Design.
Against the reality of diminishing boundaries between the physical and digital, art and science, technology and nature, Porta Venezia seeks to examine the tension between what exists and what could. Hence, the district’s title is not only a theme but a manifesto that encourages one to first question everything and then create and design. “Design can no longer be confined to one function, one material, one kind: it is a fluid language, a speculative process that embraces uncertainty: design becomes liquid, permeable, dialogic. No Boundaries Design is an invitation to rediscover the revolutionary power of doubt and to rethink the very perimeter of creativity: no longer traced by physical or semantic constraints but redefined as a space of ever-evolving freedom,” shares Carlo Barbarossa, co-founder and creative director of the Porta Venezia Design District.
Inspired by erstwhile Irish designer and architect Eileen Gray, who rejected clear-cut categorisations between art, design and architecture, Porta Venezia seeks to break down disciplinary barriers to redefine the role of contemporary design as an activation point for novel questions, newfangled narratives and hybrid spaces.
Through innovative installations, materials and processes, the district is curated to translate Gray’s thinking into experience. “The object is never static, the space is never definitive, the user is never passive,” the official release states. Displays at the design event will challenge the idea of boundaries—between interior and exterior, functional and poetic, memory and future—via visual and tactile interrogations.
Porta Venezia’s theme is further appended by its designation as the ‘Main Partner’ for the upcoming edition of Milan Design Week. To honour this, PRIMA ASSICURAZIONI (known for revolutionising the Italian insurance industry through technology), in collaboration with the creative studio TOILETPAPER, intervened to artistically reinterpret the urban spaces within the district with an impactful visual language featuring the latter’s iconic snakes to represent the tale of a fast and dynamic reality that ‘changes skin’ but remains consistent with itself. For Eccentrico, a project by Galileo s.r.l, Alessandro Corina Studio has transformed the iconic newsstand on Corso Buenos Aires into Urban Meadow, a public installation that blends nature and culture, in tandem with vitalising the public space with scope for social interaction.
Further, the district’s headquarters, MEET Digital Culture Centre (the first International Centre for Digital Art and Culture in Italy), will witness sensorial and synergistic showcases by Quebec-based visual artist Sabrina Ratté and waste management company HAIKI+. Their exhibition Realia brings together technology and biology for a speculative and immersive experience.
Google’s exhibition, Making the Invisible Visible, strives to show how abstract ideas are translated into tangible forms that can be felt and experienced. Created in collaboration with light and water artist Lachlan Turczan, the installation comprises a series of cohesive spaces sculpted out of light, blurring the boundaries between the tangible and intangible. Further deliberations on light and its interactions with design, artificial intelligence and sociality will commence at ATMOSFERA magazine, A.A.G. Stucchi and Futureberry’s interactive event, Lumen: Creativity, AI and Community.
The exhibition This Way by Škoda Auto and Italian artist Marcantonio presents an immersive experience amidst Milan’s Pavilion of Contemporary Art (PAC). Seated in PAC’s courtyard, the design installation merges with the vicinal sculptures to produce an engaging space for exploring the automobile’s characteristics. Appending the wave of creative marketing during the design week is Bioderma’s eponymous exhibition, Bioderma Sun Hub, wherein the brand’s new Photoderm XDefense Ultra Fluid SPF50+ will be launched with an immersive and relaxing experience in the heart of the district.
WonderGlass and Calico Wallpaper’s POETICA encapsulates the reimagination of glass and paper as vessels for memory and imagination, curating a surreal experience where objects shift, and boundaries dissolve in response to the visitor’s movement and perception. A second installation by Calico Wallpaper, Particulare, created in collaboration with American designer Stephen Burks and his studio Stephen Burks Man Made, seeks to serve as a gateway to different global destinations, cultures and experiences via the showcase of souvenirs collected during one’s travels.
Parisian couturier Marc-Antoine Barrois will debut his newest perfume, ALDEBARAN, within a large-scale olfactory art and experiential design installation conceptualised and made by French designer Antoine Bouillot and the district’s signature project, Smell it Every Day, undertaken by Givaudan, posits the fragrance PORTAL at the fair. Smell it Every Day is inspired by the district, its artistic currents and the spirit of freedom that pervades its streets.
Lavazza’s site-specific installation, Source of Pleasure, built in collaboration with Brazilian architect and designer Juliana Lima Vasconcellos, is a multi-sensory journey that triggers all the senses as it explores the universe of coffee. Meanwhile, GAGGIA Open House, with three home coffee stations, will be a dynamic place to share ideas, discuss, socialise, have fun and learn. Vienna Vibes by Galerie Zippenfenig will bring Viennese design to Milan, and Stefano Paulon’s Soglie will adorn the Milanese law firm Laruffa Bottinelli Avvocati Associati with a series of artworks and installations.
Turning the fun quotient up in Milan are MCM and Pet Therapy, with a collection of sculptural, pet-friendly pouffes shaped like cats and dogs. Another event curated to infuse joy in the Milanese design festival is the design exhibition Moodboard within the Paint Up showroom. With material and chromatic options displayed within the showroom, the exhibit seeks to satisfy the curiosity of those at the fair looking for style cues or pursuing ‘a certain idea of home’.
Meanwhile, luxury at the design fair is addressed with the exhibition Louis Vuitton Objets Nomades, featuring the brand’s furniture and home decor collections. Even as there is no dearth of immersive outputs at the fair, Quattroterzi vitalises Milan with Fluid Patterns, an installation that is curated like an art gallery. The exhibition explores the bond between individuals, environments, customs and traditions while reinterpreting symbolic objects of human connection in a contemporary way.
Further, artist and designer Andrea Semeghini (also known as VANADIO23) will present his ceramic collection P0RN0 ROMANTIKO in an extraordinary site-specific installation that plays with the boundaries between innocence and provocation, between the visible and the hidden. It comprises the presentation of a series of miniature ceramics displayed within glass cases, such that the images painted on them are only revealed through a magnifying glass.
With Triumph of Trophies, Maxim Velčovský reinterprets the trophy as an artefact and examines the value of awards in today’s world. Another intellectually stimulating exhibit is Lakapoliesis (2024), a project by Matteo Cibic that redefines the traditional relationship between animals and plants, reversing its anthropocentric perspective. The project, featuring large-format, three-dimensional chromatic maps, vegetal compositions, wood sculptures, recycled aluminium, marble dust and knotted wool, is inspired by the illustrated maps of Alexander Humboldt and the writings of Jagadish Chandra Bose and Monica Gagliano. In the domain of melding old and new, BBA Studio brings the exhibition Infill Heritage to Milan. Infill Heritage aims to connect Milan’s 20th-century architectural tradition and contemporary design methodologies based on tools such as parametric modelling and 3D printing.
Two-Fold Silence, 6:AM Glassworks’s first solo exhibition will offer a unique opportunity for visitors to immerse themselves in the creative universe of the brand and Convey, curated and led by Simple Flair, will offer spaces dedicated to discovering new design realities and connecting contemporary design brands with reference players to accelerate promotion, connection and collaboration. Ibis Milano Centro, on the other hand, will host a series of installations by Lund University students, showcasing the marriage of hospitality and innovation. Park Associati’s PAFF PAFF – Liminal Spaces for Sensorial Rituals will offer a spot for some respite with modular seats by cc-tapis and QuadroDesign.
Some other exhibits at the design festival include TOILETPAPER’s Toilet Miles Paper Aldridge, Wittmann’s Cultivating comfort exposition, IAMMI and Materia Studio’s SENSES, Raffles Milano’s Boundless Creativity, INTERNI’s CRE-ACTION, L’Industria Italiana del Cemento’s CONCRETAMENTE Oltre il materiale Dentro le storie, Swiss manufacturer USM Modular Furniture’s Connected by Our Dreams, Dainielli Studio’s presentation of their Magnete Collection, DEORON’s Elevating Object, and showcases by brands such as GROHE, MARK / GIUSTI, Zucchetti, Artemest, Quooker, Occhio and Dusty Deco, among others. Some talks at the fair include LYNES MILANO and “The Next Day” of car design: where innovation meets sustainability.
Attesting the district’s fluid, evolving, interactive state, most showcases, whether conceptualised as art installations or put together to present product designs by brands and studios, feature aspects of sensorial design that can append the experience at Porta Venezia.
Keep up with STIR’s coverage of Milan Design Week 2025, where we spotlight the most compelling exhibitions, presentations and installations from top studios, designers and brands. Dive into the highlights of Euroluce 2025 and explore all the design districts—Fuorisalone, 5Vie, Brera, Isola, Durini, and beyond—alongside the faceted programme of Salone del Mobile.Milano this year.
link
