MATERIAL OBSESSION 1/5: The World Beneath the Surface - Milan Design Week 2025

Welcome to the first drop of our 5-part dossier: Material Obsessions: Tocco's Unofficial Guide to Milan Design Week 2025 – Material Innovation Edition.

This is a sensory hack to the world’s largest gathering of Design, the Milan Design Week 2025 - a contraband route for those addicted to touch, texture, and transformation. As Milan Design Week 2025 opens under the theme Mondi Connessi (Connected Worlds), we sniff the trail of what’s bubbling up in the material underworld.

Connecting thousands of dots, here are some material trends we have detected throughout these must-visit exhibitions for the material-obsessed.

Alcova 2025: Greenhouse brought back to Life

Locations: Villa Borsani, Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, ex-Fabbrica SNIA, Le Serre di Pasin (Varedo) Alcova returns to Milan Design Week 2025 with its most ambitious edition yet, activating four architecturally and historically significant sites in Varedo.

From the refined interiors of Villa Borsani and Villa Bagatti Valsecchi to the post-industrial echoes of the SNIA factory and the botanical quietude of the Pasino Glasshouses, this edition offers a spatial and conceptual journey through design’s evolving dialogue with materiality.

What Tocco loves and expects to see:

Le Serre di Pasin, once a functioning greenhouse for orchid cultivation, becomes a powerful metaphor for regeneration. The glasshouse—fragile yet enduring—is reimagined as a setting for biodegradable sculptures and living installations.

Marcin Rusak’s “Ghost Orchids” developed in collaboration with the Łukasiewicz Institute, pays tribute to the site’s horticultural past while proposing a poetic material future. There is something deeply upcycled about the space: not only in its reuse but in how it nurtures new design lifecycles.

Triennale Milano: Material Alchemists but the real stars are hidden

Location: Curva space at Triennale Milano, located in Palazzo dell'Arte, Parco Sempione, Milan

At Triennale Milano, the annual showcase returns under a new name—Material Alchemists: Class of 2025 —presenting a rising generation of global designers whose work is defined by deep material enquiry.

From Antwerp to Adelaide, Hanoi to Vancouver, the selected designers manipulate matter with curiosity and rigour—folding, fusing, rethinking the possibilities of rope, raffia, stone, paper, and plastic.

What Tocco loves and expects to see:

Material Alchemists’ partners and the choice of materials. The exhibition design, crafted by DWA Studio, integrates Polygood panels—a fully recycled plastic material by The Good Plastic Company—reinforcing a commitment to circularity. Materials used in the scenography will be repurposed after the show.

StoneX, a global stone house with roots in quarry craftsmanship, partners with the exhibition to underscore the material’s origin stories. Through their curation, we’re invited to look beyond surface—into geological memory, emotional resonance, and the ethics of extraction.

ENHANCE 2025: Material Innovation As Social Agency

Location: BasicVillage (Isola), Via dell’Aprica 12

In the midst of Milan Design Week’s glamour and spectacle, ENHANCE quietly insists on something more enduring: purpose. Now in its second edition, this exhibition—curated by DesignWanted—returns to the industrial backdrop of BasicVillage with a renewed focus on material innovation as social agency.

What Tocco loves and expects to see:

Curated by Patrick Abbattista and Juan Torres, the platform rejects greenwashing and abstract gestures. Instead, it offers visitors access to a curated body of work that is research-driven, and rather intruiguing. From regenerative composites to resource-light bio-alternatives, each project is quite anchored in realism—proof that design’s next frontier is material-focused.

UNFOLD by Domus Academy: Autonomy and Accountability

Location: BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144 Milan, Italy

While Milan Design Week often celebrates polished objects and market-ready aesthetics, UNFOLD—now in its second edition—offers something far more vital: a space for young designers to reframe design’s impact.

What Tocco loves and expects to see:

Set inside the industrial halls of BASE Milano, the exhibition becomes a living index of new material proposals and socio-technological provocations.

From keratin-based textiles and Bio- leather to urban soundscapes transformed into energy, materials here are not passive surfaces—they’re vehicles for autonomy and accountability.

[Beyond Milan] — Gucci and Material Constraints

Location: Sunke Villa, Shanghai, China

Gucci opens a parallel dialogue across continents with Bamboo: Decoding an Icon—a poetic exhibition unfolding in Shanghai. Curated by 2050+ and led by architect Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, this moment traces the enduring materiality of bamboo—not only as heritage, but as hypothesis.

Anchored in the House’s historic 1947 Bamboo bag, the exhibition examines how material constraint gave rise to a new design language. In postwar Italy, raw material shortages forced founder Guccio Gucci to think laterally—turning to bamboo as a lightweight, durable, and expressive alternative. That improvisation became an icon.

What Tocco loves and expects to see:

Bamboo Encounters looks forward as much as back. In China and across East Asia—where bamboo is historically revered for its elegance, strength, and philosophical depth—the narrative takes on new resonance. Open to the public and bookable via WeChat, the show bridges East and West, heritage and hypothesis—adding a quiet but powerful footnote to the design world’s April agenda.

Next up in the series: 2/5 Immersion & Impact: Installations That Materialise A Bolder World

Stay obsessed.

From the Tocco team

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Only During Milan Design Week '25

At Tocco, we’re tirelessly connecting the dots shaping the future of design and materials. One of the outcomes? UNBOX — the world’s first portable material library. Curated, tactile, and built for the next generation of makers.

Check it out here — and don’t miss our Milan Design Week special offer, live now.