Milan Design Week is the annual April ritual when the design world descends on Italy’s style capital. For one vibrant week, Milan buzzes with creativity—from the vast halls of Salone del Mobile (the premier furniture trade fair) to the citywide Fuorisalone exhibitions and installations that spill into historic palazzos and courtyards.
This year, Studio Formafantasma – the Milan- and Rotterdam-based design duo of Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin – is staging a multi-act takeover of the festivities. Formafantasma, known for their research-driven approach and conceptual flair, will be everywhere at Milan Design Week 2025: curating a Prada-backed symposium on design and society, debuting a cutting-edge lighting collection at Euroluce (the biennial lighting exhibition within Salone), and even infusing theater into a furniture presentation. It’s a bold, ambitious agenda that promises to showcase the duo’s creative range in full force.
Prada Frames: In Transit Symposium
Formafantasma’s first act is Prada Frames, a thought-provoking symposium supported by Prada that has become an intellectual counterpoint to Milan’s product showcases. Now in its fourth edition, Prada Frames returns as a forum exploring the intersection of design, culture, and society.
This year’s theme – titled “In Transit” – examines infrastructure and movement in our world of constant circulation. “We’re looking at infrastructure through the lens of movement,” says Formafantasma’s Simone Farresin, encapsulating the focus on the flow of people, goods, data, and power. Set against an evocative backdrop (sessions will unfold in a restored 1950s Arlecchino train carriage and the erstwhile royal waiting room at Milan’s Centrale station), the symposium will host an array of thinkers from MoMA curator Paola Antonelli to artist Hito Steyerl, all dissecting how our hyper-mobile world is designed. It’s an academically tinged, inclusive event – free to attend with registration – that underscores Formafantasma’s role as designers turned curators of discourse, bringing a cerebral Fuorisalone moment to the week.
Flos at Euroluce: The SuperWire Debut
Formafantasma’s SuperWire floor lamp for Flos merges sleek geometry with a custom flexible LED core, embodying the duo’s blend of aesthetics and engineering. Over at Salone del Mobile, Formafantasma will flex their product-design muscles in collaboration with renowned Italian lighting brand Flos. At Euroluce – Salone’s dedicated lighting biennial – Flos is set to introduce seven new lamps by top designers (including Formafantasma’s first lighting family for the brand) in an immersive booth concept dreamed up by the duo.
Formafantasma’s star piece is SuperWire, a modular lighting system of planar glass and polished aluminum illuminated by a slim, flexible LED strip designed for easy repair. Don’t let its minimalist look fool you – this lamp was engineered in concert with Flos to push technical boundaries (the LED filament is a custom innovation up to one meter long) while retaining a magical simplicity. “The relationship humans have with light transcends a functional dimension and is elevated to an emotional one,” Andrea Trimarchi of Formafantasma has said, a philosophy evident in SuperWire’s warm glow and refined form.
Visitors will be able to experience SuperWire both at the bustling Flos Euroluce booth – where Formafantasma’s atmospheric video installation “The Light of the Mind” sets the scene – and in a more contemplative setting at Flos’s flagship showroom in central Milan, where a special installation will offer a closer look at the poetry behind the design. It’s a subtle yet striking example of how Formafantasma seamlessly marries technology with artistry, and it positions the duo not just as thinkers, but also as shapers of objects destined for the contemporary home.
Cassina: Staging Modernity in the Spotlight
The historic Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber in Milan, where Cassina and Formafantasma will stage their design-meets-theater performance during Design Week. For their final act, Formafantasma is teaming up with iconic furniture house Cassina to blur the boundaries between exhibition and performance. While Cassina will preview its latest designs at its showroom under the banner of “The Cassina Perspective 2025” (the brand’s ongoing vision for the contemporary home), the true pièce de résistance is happening on stage.
Titled Staging Modernity, this one-of-a-kind project transforms Milan’s newly restored Teatro Lirico into an experimental design theater. Conceived by Formafantasma and directed by opera director Fabio Cherstich, Staging Modernity combines a theatrical live performance with an immersive installation for Cassina. Each day of Design Week, professional actors will inhabit the set and perform texts that weave together design history and philosophy – think dialogues penned with philosopher Emanuele Coccia and architect Andrés Jaque – bringing intellectual heft to the spectacle.
At its core, the performance reflects on the legacy of Modernist design ideals (Cassina, after all, is celebrating 60 years of producing Le Corbusier and Perriand classics) in our present era of ecological consciousness. In the grand auditorium lined with red velvet seats, expect Cassina’s furniture classics and new pieces alike to become props in a narrative about design’s past and future. It’s an ambitious fusion of design and drama that promises to be as thought-provoking as it is visually captivating – a fitting finale to Formafantasma’s multi-venue Milan takeover.
Each of these happenings – the scholarly talks of Prada Frames, the glow of Flos’s SuperWire, the dramatic flair of Cassina’s stage – offers a different lens on Formafantasma’s creative universe. Taken together, they affirm the duo’s chameleonic talent for moving fluidly between research, product design, and experiential storytelling. As Milan Design Week 2025 approaches, one thing is clear: Formafantasma isn’t just participating in the design conversation; they’re orchestrating it across the city, with style and substance to spare.
