Salone del Mobile 2025: dates and first previews

Following the success of the campaign for the 2024 edition, designed by Publicis Groupe with the scientific collaboration of Professor Paolo Ciuccarelli, the Salone del Mobile 2025 will be presenting a new project with photography as the protagonist, created in synergy with Dentsu Creative Italy. The New York artist and photographer Bill Durgin - famous for deconstructing the human body in his work - is the author of a communication campaign that places human beings at the centre of the narrative, and recounts design as an essential element for improving the quality of everyday life. The result is “Thought for Humans.”: Durgin captures evocative images that illustrate a harmonious fusion of human forms and materials and the profound connection between design and the human experience. 

Bill Durgin said: "The photographic work for this project was put together with attention to detail, in an attempt to capture the essence of the relationship between body, materials and light. After years of physical distance, the new campaign celebrates a return to touch, bringing attention back to the connection between the human body and design. The choice of materials used - wood, metal, fabric and bioplastic - is not random, but deeply linked to the values of the Salone del Mobile. “Thought for Humans.” is exactly what great design should be. As human beings, we are confronted with design every day. Everything around us is designed by someone for someone. Great design is not only aesthetically pleasing, it brings joy to our daily interactions, to moving through spaces, making breakfast, working or sitting around a table with family. Designing furniture, I learnt how designers study the human body, our movements, our abilities, our postures, all to make life easier. Design is rooted in the human anatomy and feeds on the continuous interaction with it.” 

Robert Wilson's MOTHER with music by Arvo Pärt, will kick off the 63rd edition at Castello Sforzesco

Robert Wilson, renowned international artist and master of the creative use of light, will be the first of the guest curators to present a an extraordinarily powerful project, created in collaboration with Comune di Milano | Cultura, at the Museo Pietà Rondanini - Castello Sforzesco. After his initial participation in the Stanze e Segreti project at the Rotonda della Besana in 2000, followed by the exhibitions Imagining Prometheus at the Palazzo della Ragione in 2003, Tutti a Tavola at the Gallery of Modern Art, and Perchance to Dream with Roberto Bolle in New York in 2010, the artist, known for his works of great aesthetic and emotional impact that integrate dance, painting, design, movement, light, sculpture, music and acting, is returning to Milan to design a new ‘vision’ entitled Mother. A project curated by Franco Laera. 

The subject of this intervention, which will see the fusion of light, images, sound and movement, will be the Pietà Rondanini, on which Michelangelo worked until the end of his days, aged almost 90. The unfinished sculpture depicts the agony of the Virgin embracing the lifeless body of Christ, a theme already explored in the famous Vatican Pietà, created when he was only 25 years old. Preserved in the hall of the Spanish Hospital at the Castello Sforzesco, in an installation designed by Michele De Lucchi in 2015, Michelangelo's work will become the centrepiece of the Salone del Mobile’s first major installation in the city: Mother, by Robert Wilson, is intended to create a unique 'vision' of the masterpiece in dramaturgical dialogue with 'Stabat Mater', the musical work reinterpreted by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and performed live. The installation will be open until 18 May, it will thus take the form of a sequence of lights, images and music. 

Euroluce 2025: The Euroluce International Lighting Forum will kick off with the participation of Bob Wilson

As part of the biennial exhibition dedicated to the universe of light, on 10th and 11th April, The Euroluce International Lighting Forum, an unprecedented biennial event will explore and get to grips with all aspects of this field of design thanks to the contribution of leading figures from different disciplines. A two-day event comprising conferences, round tables and workshops, involving lighting designers, architects, scientists, creatives and professionals. The aim is to turn Euroluce 2025 into an innovative and dynamic business platform, and to involve the community, with particular focus on lighting designers, with an educational and inspirational programme dovetailing perfectly with the business experience.  

Among the first confirmed names are Robert Wilson, world-renowned theatre and visual artist, known for an innovative approach that combines light, movement, sound and text in works charged with emotion and aesthetic power; DRIFT, specialising in sculptures, installations and experiential performances that underscore the parallels between artificial and natural structures; A.J. Weissbard, internationally renowned lighting designer and multifaceted artist; the Netherlands-based leader in solar design for a sustainable, innovative and conscious future, Marjan van Aubel, and Kaoru Mende, renowned Japanese lighting designer known for his work in architectural, urban and landscape lighting, for his approach combining aesthetics, functionality and sustainability and as founder of Tokyo-based Lighting Planners Associates (LPA). 

25 years of SaloneSatellite 

Published by Corraini and edited by Beppe Finessi, “Universo Satellite. 25 anni / years of SaloneSatellite” is a book celebrating the richness, complexity, and formidable contribution that this event, founded and curated by Marva Griffin Wilshire, has brought to the Italian and international design scene. The book is a tribute to a quarter of a century of ideas, encounters and innovations that have marked the contemporary design landscape and offers a chronological narrative from 1998 to 2024. Through more than 1,200 images, unpublished documents, and testimonies, it restores the complexity and richness of a project that was born to give voice to young creatives and has become over time a global reference point for the world of design. The book not only documents the works on display, but also discusses the context in which they came into being, thus becoming a ‘magic box’ capable of going beyond mere cataloguing to become a Wunderkammer of contemporary design