MilanDesignWeek opened with an atmosphere of buoyant social energy in Milan, even as organizers and visitors weighed economic gloom and travel interruptions linked to wars in the Middle East. The city’s calendar fused an international rush of makers and designers with a dense schedule of venues, cocktails and exhibitions as the Milan Furniture Fair prepared to open Tuesday.
Artist Maurizio Cattelan set the tone for the start of MilanDesignWeek with an informal event in front of Milan’s Duomo cathedral. The AP report described Cattelan inviting people to exchange their favorite objects, then stamping “White Trash” on participants’ necks and hands in a gesture tied to his reputation for provocation.
As the week progressed, Milan Furniture Fair doors opened Tuesday at Fiera Milano Rho, drawing business and showfloor attention at the same time that off-site events expanded into the broader city. Organizers said 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries presented designs at the fair, while hundreds more events took place across Milan for Fuorisalone.
Spanish architect and designer Patricia Urquiola, one of Europe’s celebrated luxury interior and furniture figures, spoke about the event’s draw as a community experience. She said, “This week of design is so deep — an experience for all of us. I think we are a big community around the world, and I think at the end, we are a little bit all dreamers,” the AP reported.
Urquiola’s collaborations included an installation at a Milan luxury hotel tied to the German porcelain fixture company Duravit, which featured totems made from toilets and bidets, according to the report. The design week’s mix extended beyond furniture into luxury lifestyle, with the calendar pairing home-focused installations and furniture showcases with fashion-house displays.
At the furniture fair, the Salone added a new pavilion called “Raritas” devoted to designers of limited edition pieces. Curator Annalisa Rosso described the aim as bringing “antiques, high handcraft” alongside contemporary collectibles and “unique pieces,” to cover “the entire wide range of design at the Salone,” according to the AP.
The fair also spotlighted experimentation in materials and fabrication. Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis presented a bubbling sculpture described as air passing through viscose liquid inside a standing polymer wall, while Italian designer Francesco Faccin showed tables and chairs that looked like planks of wood but were bronze casts. Saudi brand Zaza made its debut, presenting curved sculptures of tinted stainless steel and a limited edition chair, and designer and architect Abdulaziz Khalid Al Tayyash said the brand wanted “to bring the Saudi story to the world” and to “expand and tell a good story” about Saudi lifestyle and culture.
Luxury fashion brands used their own spaces to tie home design to wider brand storytelling, the report said. It described Gucci hosting guests in a tranquil garden with wildflowers inside a monastery, with tapestries tracing Guccio Gucci’s origin as a bellhop in London and the maison’s creative course under designers including Tom Ford, Frida Giannini, Alessandro Michele, Sabato Sarno and Demna. It also described Louis Vuitton unveiling its latest housewares and furniture collection in a palazzo, including archival trunks and contemporary objects such as a wooden turntable stand shaped like a drill bit and a foosball table with mermaid players and eyeball handles.
Beyond brand showcases, Milan’s public and historic spaces hosted design “scapes” meant to shape how visitors moved through the city. In the courtyard of Palazzo Litta, Paris-based Lebanese artist Lina Ghotmeh created a bright pink wooden labyrinth meant to slow people down so they could browse design books, sit and chat; the report included her description of visitors becoming part of the installation’s “choreography and dance.” At Piazza Gae Aulenti, among Milan’s skyscrapers, Andrea Olivari created sculptures of the heart, stomach and brain paired with subtitles: “Follow your heart, use your brain, trust your stomach.”
Italian furniture and design also featured as a business story, with the sector described as economically significant. The report said Italian design and furniture generates 2.3% of GDP and represents more than 4% of national manufacturing output. Claudio Feltrin, president of FederlegnoArredo, said the collision of design week and the furniture fair had become a premier global destination and a critical platform for small and midsize companies to reach buyers and markets.
The opening of the furniture fair included political representation as well: Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni opened the fair alongside Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, the AP said. While Feltrin and others described the sector as having weathered U.S. tariffs better than expected—with 1.4% growth last year to revenues of 52 billion euros, 36% from exports—the report said uncertainty from the Middle East wars was dampening forecasts for this year, with energy prices rising and transport hampered.
In early 2026, the report said global exports were down 9% to nearly 1.6 billion euros in the first two months of the year, including a 20% drop to the United States. Feltrin said that if the conflict ends soon, the sector could recover as it did after last year’s tariffs.