This is the second drop in our 5-part dossier: Material Obsessions, your contraband guide to Milan Design Week 2025.
In our first drop, we tracked the material underworld’s next moves—sniffing out trends from Alcova’s greenhouse dreams to Gucci’s bamboo whispers. Now, this drop is about immersion and impact—installations that don’t just hint at the future but pull you into the present with texture, emotion, and environmental consciousness.
These are spaces that (at least that's what our Tocco team hopes to see) demand you touch, feel, and reckon with what’s real—for the material-addicted who trust the raw over the polished.
Here are six stops where materials (potentially) stop talking and start doing.
Tortona Rocks 2025 – “Unframed”: Materials Without Rules
Location: Opificio 31, Tortona
For its 10th anniversary, Tortona Rocks breaks loose from traditional exhibition formats. "Unframed" transforms Opificio 31 into a space where design unfolds without a script—no fixed themes, no tidy conclusions. The event is said to foster intuitive and authentic exploration, inviting visitors to reconnect with the tactile and the unexpected. It’s an invitation to get lost—and find something new in the process.
What Tocco loves and expects to see:
The freedom to feel first, define later. "Unframed" celebrates design in its rawest form—open, surprising, and alive with possibility.
BASE Milano – “We Will Design: Making Kin”
Location: Via Bergognone 34, Tortona
This year, BASE Milano invites us to reimagine kinship—not as something inherited, but something intentionally built. "We Will Design: Making Kin" transforms the industrial space into a platform for shared living, experimentation, and interspecies connection.
From Temporary Home—a series of designer-in-residence ateliers—to Camp, a rooftop micro-community tackling Milan’s housing crisis, the project fosters design as cohabitation. At the heart of it all is "Weekend Week" by Matilde Cassani Studio, an ever-changing installation shaped by the people who move through it.
What Tocco loves and expects to see:
BASE makes room—for others, for friction, for futures in formation. This feels like kinship as creative resistance, where design becomes a practice of care.
Google x Lachlan Turczan: Light You Can Feel
Location: Garage 21, Via Archimede 26
At Milan Design Week 2025, Google and artist Lachlan Turczan bring light into physical form. Housed in the darkened halls of Garage 21, "Making the Invisible Visible" uses precision optics, sound vibrations, and a haze of water droplets to shape beams of light into towering, sculptural columns. The result is an immersive installation that turns the ephemeral into something almost tangible.
Alongside the experience, Google showcases the evolution of its hardware design—from sound-shaped earbuds to new thermostats that respond as you approach—tracing how light, form, and interaction are increasingly intertwined.
What Tocco loves and expects to see:
The restraint and refinement. This could be craft and technology, distilled. Light behaves like a material, and the space hums with intention.
Lexus – “A–Un” Interactive Exhibit: Matter That Listens
Location: Superstudio Più, Tortona
Lexus returns to Milan Design Week with "A–Un", an interactive installation that transforms breath, movement, and proximity into a synchronised spatial response. Inspired by the Japanese concept of "Aun no Kokyu"—the rhythm of shared breath—and Lexus’s "Black Butterfly" cockpit interface for electric vehicles, the installation explores the future of intuitive human–machine connection.
Created in collaboration with SIX and STUDEO, "A–Un" invites visitors into a space where technology listens, aligns, and responds—quietly, precisely, and without instruction.
What Tocco loves and expects to see:
A moment of stillness in motion. A poetic study in presence, where interaction becomes awareness.
ApexBrasil – “Cashew Rain”: Unpolished Wildness
Location: West Loggia, Courtyard of Honour – University of Milan
At Fuorisalone 2025, ApexBrasil and curator Bruno Simões return with "Cashew Rain"—an evocative installation rooted in a uniquely Brazilian metaphor. A "cashew rain" refers to a light shower before the bloom, which traditionally signals renewal and abundance. Here, it becomes a symbol of transformation: of how design can reframe not just aesthetics, but social and environmental realities.
Spanning 300m², the Brazil Pavilion brings together over 50 companies across furniture, lighting, stone, textiles, and craft. Warm colours and organic forms echo the ripe cashew fruit, while reused and reforested materials affirm a commitment to sustainability.
What Tocco loves and expects to see:
A pavilion that resists spectacle in favour of grounded optimism. Cashew Rain could remind us that transformation isn’t flashy—it’s slow, rooted, and collective.
Elle Decor x Patricia Urquiola – “Alchemica”: Texture That Binds
Location: Palazzo Bovara, Corso Venezia 51
For Milan Design Week 2025, Elle Decor Italia joins forces with Patricia Urquiola to present "Alchemica"—an immersive installation that reimagines the home as a living, evolving organism. Inspired by the ancient language of alchemy, the project unfolds across the symbolic phases of Nigredo, Albedo, and Rubedo, mirroring the transformations that shape our domestic lives.
Set within the neoclassical halls of Palazzo Bovara, "Alchemica" blends architecture, material, and light to express how interiors can adapt, shift, and grow over time. The project is enriched by contributions from Valerio Tiberi (lighting), Antonio Perazzi (landscape), and Netsuke Studio (exhibition coordination).
What Tocco loves and expects to see:
The way "Alchemica" translates transformation into texture. A natural rhythm of living. A home that listens, adapts, and evolves—quietly, beautifully.
These six—Tortona Rocks’ unfiltered matter, BASE’s kin-making lab, Google’s sculpted light, Lexus’s responsive form, ApexBrasil’s grounded surge, and Urquiola’s evolving domestic alchemy—promise to offer more than spectacle.
Next up in our list? Drop 3/5 — The Surface Edit: Finishes, Textiles & New Decorative Standards
Stay tuned. Stay tactile.
