There is a kind of object that is hard to explain in words. Not because it’s complicated, but because it has something you only understand by standing in front of it: a weight, a proportion, a material you didn’t expect. Isola Design District, long the place during Design Week where the most interesting things happen away from the main spotlight, brings several of these together in a single edition this year.
Ten years ago Gabriele Cavallaro was literally knocking door to door to convince neighbors to host designers. Today Isola Design Festival is an international network. But the pirate spirit — as he likes to call it — remains intact. For this tenth edition, titled TEN: The Evolving Now, we looked at the vast selection of product design with one question in mind: which of these objects would our future self buy?
Future Archives
At ZONAK (Via Spalato 11)
Amit Hadar — KAN
Three small objects, meant to be held in the hand. They rotate, rest, are squeezed. KAN doesn’t do anything extraordinary in a technological sense — yet it may be the most radical proposal in the entire selection. At a time when every object tries to connect, notify, respond, Hadar designs something that does exactly the opposite: it brings attention back to the body, to weight, to temperature. A deliberate pause, designed with sensory precision.
Alessandro Pagura — Falò Floor Lamp
The light source is not visible. Only its effects can be seen — reflections on vertical and inclined surfaces, a light that fills the room without ever revealing its origin. Pagura draws inspiration from a fire seen from afar in the woods, that diffused, warm glow whose source you can’t quite locate. The result is a lamp that transforms any space into a place you want to stay in.
Isola Design Awards Winners’ Showcase
At COPERNICO ISOLA FOR S32 (Via Filippo Sassetti 32)
Snorm — Water Fold
A flat sheet of aluminum that becomes a mirror, stool, sculpture. Precise cuts and folds — Eastern inspiration, industrial logic — transform a two-dimensional surface into a functional three-dimensional object. Water Fold is part of an open collection, meaning the project is not finished: it is a system that keeps exploring how much can be hidden within a flat surface.
Punch Peerasin — GROWinK
This is what happens when printing stops being a process and becomes a cycle. GROWinK combines CMYK technology with fungi and bacteria: pigments come from fungal growth, while bacterial spores break down synthetic substrates, returning them to the soil. A form of printing that produces no waste — it becomes earth. It’s the kind of project that feels like science fiction until you see it working.
Isola Design Gallery
At FABBRICA SASSETTI (Via Filippo Sassetti 31)
Strata — Column Lamp
Mahogany carved in the shape of a Corinthian column, combined with steel and glass. Column Lamp is part of the Period Study series and has no intention of going unnoticed. It is an object that brings past and present into dialogue without nostalgia or irony — with a formal confidence that is already, in itself, a statement.
Shape of Belonging ATELIER KONDAKJI (via Vincenzo Civerchio 2)
Felipe Escudero and Román de Lorenzo — IMÁGENES
A chaise longue that is part of a series built like a kit of components. The stated starting point is a moment before language — when forms were still premonitions, not definitions. The result is an object that doesn’t easily explain itself, but is immediately recognizable as something different from everything around it.
Rising Talents
At ZONAK (Via Spalato 11)
Hagar Guri — Wall-mounted citrus juicer
Two hundred centimeters of vertical stainless steel. A citrus juicer that is also a sculpture — or perhaps a sculpture that also functions as a juicer, depending on how you look at it. The form is sleek and precise, the material ensures stability and durability. It’s the kind of object that makes you want to redesign your kitchen around it.
You can find all these pieces at Isola Design District during Milan Design Week, from April 20 to 26. The main venue is Fabbrica Sassetti, at Via Filippo Sassetti 31 — a 1930s building, formerly a silk mill, reopening as the heart of the festival. To navigate all the district locations, the full map is available in Collater.al’s official guide.
Courtesy Isola Design, all designers
