SaloneSatellite 2025: discover the theme and the latest novelties

SaloneSatellite - Ph. Ludovica Mangini

The event devoted to budding talents under 35 founded and directed by Marva Griffin Wilshire is now in its 26th edition. This is the way it will be

From 8 to 13 April, during the Salone del Mobile.Milano, Pavilions 5 and 7 of Fiera Milano Rho will host the 26th edition of SaloneSatellite, the event founded in 1998 and curated by Marva Griffin Wilshire to showcase the talents of designers under 35 and offer them professional opportunities.

As always, the new edition will have a layout designed by Ricardo Bello Dias in collaboration with Hariadna Pinate, celebrating the encounter between tradition and innovation, exploring the potential of craft-based processes and materials to interpret contemporary cultural, digital, ecological and social innovations.

The theme proposed to the approximately 700 selected designers and the 20 participating Design Schools and Universities is NUOVO ARTIGIANATO: UN MONDO NUOVO//NEW CRAFTSMANSHIP: A NEW WORLD, since building a bridge between the heritage and the contemporary vision is essential to preserve and reinvent craft practices, ensuring their relevance in the modern world. In this respect, craft skills, with their processes and materials, go beyond a purely vernacular or folkloric interest, also finding application today in industry. In achieving this, manual skills, care and the physicality of objects are increasingly indispensable. It is not a question of contrasting craft and industrial production, but of seeking a balance capable of promoting design in harmony with nature, rather than at odds with it, and of reflecting on the forms of intelligence necessary in the present and future.

The talents in this edition were chosen by a Selection Committee comprising leading figures from the worlds of design, architecture, media and education. Its members were Hiroyuki Anzai, opinion leader, Nikkei Comemo; Felicia Arvid, designer and former participant in the SaloneSatellite; Ricardo Bello Dias, architect; Nicole Bottini, journalist, director of Class TV Moda; Marco Cassina, Marketing and Communication Manager of MDF Italia; Tomas Dalla Torre, founding member of Il Fanale Group; Beppe Finessi, researcher and design critic; Ferruccio Laviani, architect; Sergio Nava, Director of Education and Global Scientific Director of the Istituto Marangoni Milano – The School of Design; Guglielmo Poletti, designer and former participant in the SaloneSatellite; Marco Romani – editor-in-chief of DOOR and a collector; Marva Griffin Wilshire, Founder and Curator of SaloneSatellite.

A program of encounters and events will take place at the SaloneSatellite Arena (Pavilion 7). On 9 April at 3 p.m., the presentation ceremony of the 14th edition of the SaloneSatellite Award will be held. All the candidate prototypes will, as always, be exhibited in a dedicated exhibition in Pavilion 5 and assessed by an international Jury, headed, ever since the first edition, by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator Department of Architecture and Design and Director, Research and Development of the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA (New York).

On 10 April, the famous artist and filmmaker Robert Wilson will visit the SaloneSatellite. He will pay a visit to the stand of the PRATT Institute, Brooklyn Campus, to pay tribute to his Alma Mater and, later, at 3 p.m., he will address a special message to the designers taking part from the Arena, sharing inspirations and reflections. After Robert Wilson, on 10 April at 3:30 p.m., again at the SaloneSatellite Arena, Alberto Cavalli, General Manager of the Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte and the creative mind of Homo Faber, will give a speech on the subject of contemporary craftsmanship.

Admission to the SaloneSatellite 2025 is free with direct access from Cargo 3. Visitors (tickets and admission here) already at the fair can access it directly from Pavilions 5 and 7.