Porta Venezia Design District ventures into the Gray area

An elegant and extremely private woman who wore Poiret and was photographed by Berenice Abbott, prolific designer and artist Eileen Gray managed to carve out a niche for herself and stand out in the world of industrial design and architecture, becoming a visionary with a style all her own. By fleeing away from trends, styles, and, most importantly, expectations, Gray was independent, free, unique and designed according to what she felt. An advocate of simple, frank, authentic and artifice-free design, Gray laid the foundations of the modern design movement through unbridled intention. One of her most memorable, triggering and bubbly quotes, “To create, one must first question everything.”, is at the core of Porta Venezia Design District’s theme for this year’s edition of Milan Design Week.

As we find ourselves existing someplace between our physical and digital domains and just as Gray dared to blur the line between art, design and architecture, Porta Venezia Design District’s No Boundaries Design manifesto breaks down disciplinary barriers to reconfigure the role of the contemporary designer into a builder of narratives, an explorer of hybrid spaces and unfixed notions: curiosity-driven, in tune with one’s surroundings, asking questions out loud. From 7 to 13 April, 2025, the Milanese district will be enveloped by a captivating line-up of exhibitions, installations, activations, and events. Through this year’s concept, design becomes wreathed in radical questioning umbrage, and a field of tension between what exists and what could exist becomes unlocked. 

WonderGlass and Calico Wallpaper are set to present POETICA, a fusion between craftsmanship, materiality and poetry, in Istituto dei Ciechi. Drawing inspiration from the act of making and storytelling, the captivatingly vibrant installation reimagines glass and paper as vessels for memory and imagination. In POETICA, materials encapsulate traces of process and meaning and so, in this dreamlike installation, objects shift, boundaries reveal and conceal themselves, and meaning becomes shaped by those who observe and experience POETICA. In this story-in-the-making, the line between creation and perception dissolves. Founded in 2013 by father and son Maurizio and Christian Mussati and based between London and Italy, WonderGlass has contemporised the classic rules of glassmaking. Through experimentation with the re-appropriation of traditional art forms, Calico Wallpaper creates custom fit, non-repeating wall murals.

Led by the creative duo Edoardo Pandolfo and Francesco Palù and a focus on innovating Murano glassmaking, Milan-based design brand 6:AM will showcase its very solo exhibition entitled Two-Fold Silence. Having been abandoned for decades, the historic former public bathrooms of Piscina Cozzi in Milan will now be rejuvenated through creativity. As past and present collide, site-specific installations, past creations and new lighting and object collections curated by Pandolfo and Palù will transform the space into one of discovery.

Curated and led by Simple Flair, in its third edition, international design platform Convey will host brands and projects such as Convey Bar and Convey Market, spaces dedicated to meeting and discovering new design realities, in its brand new location in the heart of Porta Venezia. Convey is set to introduce the concept of guest designers, thus expanding its curatorship beyond brands. The edition will spotlight New York-based design studio Sunfish, which will put on display its self-produced furniture collection for the first time in Europe. Rooted in the promotion of shared values and led by its desire to shape the new international design scene, Convey connects contemporary design brands and reference players to accelerate growth.

After eight years of curating design excellence online and garnering 100,000+ followers on Instagram, DEORON is set to unveil its first-ever physical collective exhibition. Thoughtfully merging furniture, lighting, home decor, lifestyle, tableware, textiles, accessories and tech, ELEVATING OBJECTS brings together more than 40 emerging and well-established international design brands, many exhibiting for the first time at Milan Design Week, that wholeheartedly align with DEORON’s signature avant-garde visual language. With quality and aesthetic innovation as its center, the venue will feature an original exhibition setup at Via Paolo Frisi 3, including a custom-made artisanal sound system with a program of listening sessions during the day.

How can one cultivate comfort? Wittmann has the answer. Headquartered in Austria, Wittmann blends its craftsmanship and love for design into exquisite pieces of furniture passed down through generations. Entitled Cultivating Comfort, an immersive retrospective tracing nearly 130 years of design excellence, will celebrate the renowned brand’s rich history and its most defining creative milestones and will feature pieces by esteemed designers Jaime Hayon, Sebastian Herkner, and Federica Biasi that seamlessly synchronise contemporary innovation with Wittmann’s signature techniques. The picturesque Maria Calderara space on Via Lazzaretto will serve as the backdrop as Wittmann’s unwavering dedication to handmade precision takes center stage. The assortment of sofas, armchairs, beds, and mattresses will highlight the brand’s unwavering commitment to comfort and quality.

IAMMI and Materia Studio will conspire a feast for the senses with their “room of wonder.” Transforming visitors into protagonists of an engaging narrative, SENSES is a journey defined by a curation of pieces and objects of bold and symbolic aesthetic on the outside and intriguing material formulas on the inside. Taking place in MelzoDodici, the exhibit will bring each IAMMI-designed object to life through a sophisticated interplay of light and shadow, leading the viewer with an invisible direction that highlights specific details at precise intervals. Tactile contrasts, olfactory stimuli, and audiovisual formulas will enhance the spectacle, creating a memorable journey of intense sensoriality. 

Leading global brand for bathroom solutions and kitchen fittings GROHE will transform Milan’s Garden Senato into an immersive exhibition space showcasing a curated selection of functional products, crafted artifacts, and pieces that facilitate meaningful interactions with water. Visitors will have the chance to explore how the products create a bridge between humans, water, and the environment. A mix of indoor and outdoor elements, the Aqua Atelier space will inspire reflection and the creation of an Aqua Poem. Constructed from recycled bottles, the Aqua Bar will highlight the environmental impact of single-use plastics and the growing issue of water pollution. The GROHE Aqua Gallery will mirror the brand’s passion for thoughtful design and environmental responsibility. 

Through its Connected by Our Dreams exhibition, USM invites you to partake in a truly unique setup that embodies the heart of the furniture leader in all the right ways through playfulness and versatility. Viale Piave 27 will feature five immersive spaces to engage with the brand’s new and inventive add-on product. By using colour, scale, sound, and texture, dreamlike worlds of one’s own creation will evoke wonder, flip reality, and provoke new ways of thinking about modularity. Over the last six decades, USM has made modularity timeless and sustainable through its unique approach to design that transcends trends and evolves to meet the aspirations of each generation. 

In its third year, the Porta Venezia Design District enters a new and dynamic chapter via an ever-expanding ecosystem of ideas, voices and creative visions. Through open-mindedness, processes, tangible constructs and not, No Boundaries Design powerfully conveys Gray’s mastery through experience, ever so slightly held captive by a triangle of notions–an object is never static, a space is never definitive, and a user is never passive.