Raw Spaces, Bold Ideas: Revisiting Alcova of Milan Design Week 2025
- Zeynep Çağla Baki
- Jun 27
- 8 min read
Updated: Jun 28
It’s been nearly three months since Milan Design Week 2025, yet the energy of the Milan streets still feels fresh. During that week, the entire city transformed into a living, breathing celebration of design. From gallery openings in Brera to pop-up exhibitions, hidden in the courtyards of historical Milanese buildings. Milan’s city center was buzzing with creativity and conversation. Cafes and bars were full of designers discussing what they had just seen, while every street corner seemed to lead to another unexpected installation.
At the heart of it all was Salone del Mobile 2025, the industry’s flagship event. Held at the expansive Fiera Milano grounds, it featured thousands of brands showcasing everything from furniture and lighting to materials and technology. The scale was staggering and inspiring yet quite intense. With so much to see across countless halls, you could spend days there and still miss entire sections. It was a thrilling whirlwind of innovation and product launches, but also could feel a little overwhelming at times.
And that’s where Alcova offered something beautifully different. Located just outside the main flow of the city, it provided a slower, more thoughtful kind of experience, one rooted in experimentation and storytelling. Far from the polish of the fairgrounds, Alcova 2025 unfolded in raw industrial spaces, inviting designers to challenge conventions and immerse visitors in absorbing installations.
Even though the week has come and gone, some of the most thought-provoking exhibitions from Alcova have stayed with me. I’m revisiting a few standout moments, experiences that still echo with creative boldness and left a mark well beyond Milan.
Alcova
This year, Alcova 2025 brought its installations to many remarkable sites in Varedo, just outside Milan: the grand historic Villa Borsani and Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, as well as the industrial former SNIA factory. Villa Borsani, designed in the 1940s by Osvaldo Borsani, served as a beautifully preserved example of modernist residential architecture. Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, a 19th‑century summer residence with a beautiful formal garden, adding a poetic, classical touch. Meanwhile, the SNIA factory, a rationalist textile plant of the 1930s boasting a towering chimney and raw industrial volumes, contrasted sharply with the elegant villas.
Just around the corner, the Brutal exhibition held at Corte Franca embraced a similarly unfiltered spirit, activating another abandoned building in the same neighborhood with a showcase of material-forward, boundary-pushing design that echoed Alcova’s independent ethos.
Villa Borsani
Villa Borsani, designed by Osvaldo Borsani in the 1940s, is a landmark of Italian modernism celebrated for its innovative use of space and natural light. Its clean, geometric forms and distinctive floating staircase showcase a refined balance between architecture and craftsmanship, making it a perfect venue for Alcova’s cutting-edge design exhibitions.
The King's Hat by Contem and Nick Ross
The collection of objects emerged from the collaboration of Contem, a design company works with discarded materials, and Nick Ross, Stockholm based designer. All crafted from linden trees of Kungshatt which planted during King Fredrik I in the 1730s, carrying the soul of Sweedish royal history.
Living furnitures of the collection welcomes the visitors around the iconic staircase of Villa Borsani, just in front of the magnificent window naturally illuminating the whole villa.
Jangalname by VeeCollect
Jangalnāmé, to be exact, was one of the most dramatic exhibitions of Villa Borsani, including the visitors in an immersive experience of storytelling through design. Each piece crafted from natural elements, Vanda Hajizadeh, interior designer and founder of London based VeeCollect, aimes to create emotions by triggering all five senses.
To this day, I can still recall the smell in the room which brought everyone into a state of curiosity and started a conversations within which proves the intention behind this exhibition.
Layer Cake by Completedworks
Creative director of completedworks Anna Jewsbury, explains the creative idea behind the debute of their furniture collection in Alcova as visual elements being in a transitional state, discussing the permanence expectation of traditional design.
Known by their sculptural jewellery and objects, I could easily say Completedworks created one of the most interesting furniture pieces of design week with the foam-looking Layer Cake, playing with materiality and visual expectations of visitors.
Poodle Armchair by Mati Sipiora
Despite its location between two exhibition rooms on the upper level of Villa Borsani, Poddle Armchair attracted many visitors and invited for a moment of reflection through this immersive experience.
He adopts kinetic proportions by creating a contrast with the cold nature of steel. Playful form of the chair reflects Poland based designer Mati Sipiora's enthusiasm on exploration of different forms.
J39.5 by AtMa inc.
J39.5 exhibition filled with timber chairs, standing like models on a podium, suprising the visitors in the dark basement room of Villa Borsani. AtMa inc. duo established in 2013, founded by interior designer Makoto Suzuki and artist Ayumi Koyama, explains the process behind the exhibition as a revitalization of the iconic J39 Shaker Chair by reconstructing the damaged elements in respect to Mogensen to create a new value.
They offer new compositional proposals for the chair, not by adding new materials but reassembling them with a change of mindset.
Villa Bagatti Valsecchi
Villa Bagatti Valsecchi stands as a aristocratic testament in the landscape of Varedo, considering its 19th-century neoclassical elegance in the domestic layout of today's way of living. I must say, the vast landscape of the garden left a far more captivating impression on me than the grand, frescoed interiors with their astonishing ceilings.
While enjoying an Aperol Spritz on the stairs, overtaken by the wild landscape across the fountain, I imagined the daily life of the people who lived there in the early 1900s; sunday brunch parties shared with friends and family, thoughtful strolls through the small hills surrounded by flamboyant trees and perhaps late night meetings in the most hidden corners with a secret lover.
Walking around the garden, you had a chance to come across an installation that offers an immersive yet ephemeral experience which will become a collective memory for the people, unique to that time and place.
Bokrijk by VAKlab and Michaël Verheyden
Standing like a bee-hive covered with a thatch roof on the gentle hills of the Villa Bagatti garden, Bokrijk Pavilion proposes an authentic experience for the visitors through a curious exploration. Seven objects hidden inside the structure, designed by the Belgian designer Michael Verheyden, handcrafted by the VAKlab artisans who works around circular economy, natural construction materials and techniques. Explored through little holes, the organic structure invites visitors interact with the natural craftmanship.
The Blood of Stone by nysædition
Charles Guerlain, a gardener artist came together with the designer Marion Saxod to brings the daily ritual of a mediterranean gardener. As brutalistic it stands on the approachable green landscape of the garden, the functional art piece, channel of water releasing a fragnance, attracted visitors with its sense-triggering presense.
Design Signals Snapshop by FABER
These installations were located just across the entrance of Villa Bagatti, surprising visitors with the futuristic nature of stainless steel construction, standing right under the ornamented ceiling of the neoclassical room.
Exploring the connection between design, industry and technology; Timişoara's independent creative collective FABER reflects the productive heritage and academic research ecosystem of Romania. This projected invited the visitors to engage with the process behind a collaborative work, emphasizing the multidisciplinary nature of contemporary design resarch.
Betsy Collection by Uniqka
Turkish design studio, Uniqka, aiming to revitalize traditional craftmenship with contemporary design approach exhibited their Betsy Collection in collaboration with Lara Bohinc. The collection is consist of five pieces, inspired by the beauty of layered feathers of birds, offers visual and tactile experience by expression the grandeur nature of leather.
Carding Collectibles by Studio Gonzalo Bascuñan
Maximalist appearane of playful pillars wrapped in recycled cotton rods hides a meaningful conversation about the environmental impact of fast-fashion on our planet, espesially on Atacama Desert connecting Chile and Peru's vast landscape. Gonzalo Bascunan aimed to create an eco-conscious dialogue on material world through colorful gradient patterns.
Anachron Collection by Studio Lugo
Another Anatolian influence in the design scene of Villa Bagatti was by Studio Lugo, Istanbul based designer Doruk Kubilay. They exhibited Anachron Collection, deeply roted in the agricultural heritage of civilizations dating back to 8.300 BC. It appeared as a solid evidence of Mesopotamian woodworking, metalworking, embroidery and ceramic craftmanship culture.
SNIA Factory
SNIA Viscosa was once a textile factory yet today, it stands as a rough, industrial space hidden in the overgrown parts of northern Milan. Its crumbling roof, cracked walls and old concrete beams quietly show traces of its productive past. These raw details create a strong contrast with the thoughtful, innovative design pieces placed throughout the building during Alcova. The large, open spaces once busy with machines now hold creative installations that explore size, sound, and how we experience the material world.
Under the Volcano by Ranieri
First space that welcomes visitors to embrace the atmosphere of the old factory building was under the outworn concrete roof with glass openings naturally illuminating the exhibition area. Embracing new-gen technology, crafted from raw lava stone blocks by the digital artist Quayola; Erosions sculptures were exhibited like a statement of nature standing its ground, proving the possibilities of algorithmic simulations in design.
Soundscape composed by Rodrigo D'Erasmo, mimicks volcanic eruptions beneath the earth's crust echoed through vibrating glass windows, offered a multisensory experience for the visitors.
PORTAL by Decibel and Vizcom
Collaboration of Decibel, specialized in large-scale 3D-printed recycled furnitures and Vizcom, AI-driven design platform presents the possibilities of circular production methods. Designed by prominent designers, ten sculptural chairs were 3-D printed on site during the exhibition from repurposed materials with the help of Caracol's robotic arm. Celebrating creative workflow of sustainable production in the digital craftmanship era, the exhibition attracted visitors with curiosity and playfulness.
T.o.y.s by Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle
Across the halls of SNIA Factory, visitors were invited to relax and reflect at the T.o.y.s exhibition of Burg Giebichenstein University, objects resulted from a workshop took place days before the exhibition. Apparently, the students were assigned with only three materials being recycled mattress cover fibres, raw cotton fabrics and polyester ropes and one additional structural material choosen by them. 1:1 scale seating elements were aimed to portray the possibility of upholstering without consuming large amount of foam and unrecycable textile materials.
Corte Franca
Located at Via Umberto I, 80; collective exhibition 'Brutal' curated by BeAlpha and Foro Studio took place with thought-provoking experiences centered around contradictions, wounds and transformative possibilities of contemporary world. The courtyard of the early 20th century ruined structure, Corte Franca, offered a platform for conversation and discussion, while the intimate inner rooms held exhibitions that questioned our relationship with raw materials and brutality of modern life, inviting viewers to witness sharp tension between heritage and innovation, destruction and renewal.
War Games by Arciuolo and Antoniali
Provoking exhibition collaboratively created by Arciuolo and Antoniali duo that questioned not only the brutal reality, if not us but millions people experiences, but also the aesthetic expectations of Milan design week through the material choices and message for this specific installation. War Games reflected our subconcious reaction to brutal news across the globe in a format that is almost playful.
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