Milan Minute: On the Ground with Design’s Leading Voices

In a city-wide celebration of contemporary craft, the ‘Milan Minute’ video series captures the essential energy moving through Milan Design Week 2026. Produced in collaboration with Dezeen, these quick-fire dispatches bring together a global collective of visual thinkers to interrogate a singular question.

How do we balance the absolute precision of our digital tools with the sensory, unpredictable nature of raw materials?

From the historic courtyards of Palazzo Litta to the experimental landscape of Alcova, today’s practitioners are deploying advanced digital workflows to push the very limits of what can be physically built.

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At Territory Studio, creative director Perry Mason explores how digital precision is actively redefining spatial storytelling. By treating the digital model as an expansive narrative tool, designers can map out complex, emotive client journeys long before a project hits the fabrication floor.

Meanwhile, at Palazzo Litta, architect Lina Ghotmeh utilized rapid 3D prototyping to realize her striking "Metamorphosis in Motion" installation—a complex, 17-meter pink maze. The speed of modern modeling tools allowed her studio to fluidly iterate on intricate, large-scale geometries, embedding a contemporary "Archaeology of the Future" directly within a grand Baroque setting.

This year’s showcase also highlights an industry obsessed with the tactile and the transformative. At Alcova, projects like Sten Studio’s "The Wedding" deploy stone-sculpted figures to generate a surreal hybrid of ancient physical craft and modern digital narrative.

Nearby, designer Laurids Gallée presents ethereal resin explorations that challenge our subconscious perceptions of light and transparency—pieces that demand to be experienced in person.

The series concludes with an intimate look into the personal shortlists of the industry’s most influential curators: 

Max Fraser x Studiopepe breaks down the spatial strategies and hidden details behind their highly immersive show apartment. View Reel

Max Fraser x Laurids Gallée  shares a designer-led shortcut to the week's most technically innovative and evocative material displays.  View Reel

Jane Englefield x Claudia Afsha unpacks how emerging generative AI tools are beginning to integrate seamlessly into her studio's early-stage design processes.  View Reel

Across every historic courtyard and experimental room in Milan, the consensus among practitioners is clear. The future of design belongs to those who can navigate between the absolute clarity of the screen and the rich texture of the physical world.

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