10 design and architecture exhibitions to see in 2025

Text by

Andrea Branzi - Ph. Corso Como 10

From Italy to France, passing through China. Here are the Italian and international exhibitions and events we recommend you not to miss this year

Memory as an anchor to experience, as an emotional connection, is the not-so-slender thread running through the ten exhibitions selected for the new year. Ten different and complementary appointments, ten opportunities to return to a new dimension of living that is less designed and more poetic, making space for all emotions. From tributes to Letizia Battaglia and Andrea Branzi, to forays into the multifaceted creativity of Franco Raggi, from places of respect to the futuristic museographic revolution, to the participatory works by Marinella Senatore, who in Rebibbia uses light to shed light on the living conditions in prisons. Projects that engage in a dialogue with time, which has been and will be, and which cross space with a voguing step. Not bad.

ANDREA BRANZI. Civilizations without jewels have never existed

Curated by Alessio de’ Navasques, Corso Como Galleria (until 16 February). Designer, architect, historian and theorist, the recipient of three Compasso d’Oro awards - one of them for lifetime achievement - Branzi was a many-sided, radical figure, whose thinking about design traversed with unprecedented sensitivity the applied arts, domestic and urban space. A “poetic and interdisciplinary way of living” that the exhibition focuses on starting from his series of gold and silver jewels, Silver & Gold, and his objects in silver and birch wood, Silver & Wood, made in Belgium in the second half of the 1990s and collected in a retrospective exhibition at the Design Museum in Ghent in 1998. At the heart of the exhibition are the jewels, gold and silver garlands, crowns and necklaces that. “framing the human body in a landscape, mark its aura with leaves and natural elements, to highlight that mystical dimension of ornament in its primordial significance, as a means that brings the person closer to the divine,” as Alessio de’ Navasques writes in the text accompanying the exhibition.
Where: MIlan, Galleria Corso Como, 10
When: until 16 february 2025

PASTORALE

In spring, the Milanese cultural scene presents the work of the artist hailing from Vittorio Veneto (Treviso). The exhibition draws inspiration from the history of the Sala delle Cariatidi (the exhibition venue). They range from the events of the 20th century, which caused its almost total destruction during the air raids in 1943 to the exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica in 1953. The monumental installation explores the link between man and nature, interweaving personal and collective dimensions. It will occupy the large hall, while the project will also extend to other spaces in the city and include performances, sculptures, installations and sound works.
Where: Palazzo Reale, Sala delle Cariatidi
When: until 02 June 2025

EASIER TO BREATHE

By Jordan Watson, presented by Robilant+Voena in the Protestant Church of St. Moritz (from 30 January to 6 March).
A natural continuation of the exhibition recently opened at the Milan branch of the ‘Octavia’s Butler’ gallery, the new event stages the moment of relief when, after breaking down barriers, man moves from imagining the future to inhabiting it. The space into which the American artist takes us is a space for joy and a greater connection with oneself and the world. Internationally known for ‘Love Watts’, the platform with over two million followers (including Rihanna and Katy Perry), Jordan Watson has been involved in Afrofuturism, an artistic and cultural movement that arose in the 1960s, and through his works he celebrates the potential of the black community.
Where: Chiesa Protestante di St. Moritz
When: until 06 March 2025

LETIZIA BATTAGLIA

Curated by Walter Guadagnini, Jeu de Paume
A selection of 200 vintage and modern prints highlighting the talent of the Italian photographer, photojournalist and politician, who made the battle against the mafia her authorial signature. At the center of the exhibition is her incredible ability to portray the world, revealing all its aspects, from the most frightening to the most poetic. Created in collaboration with the Letizia Battaglia Archive in Palermo, the exhibition will return to Italy in 2026 to be hosted in the rooms of the Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in Turin.

Where: Château de Tours, Francia
When: untill 18 May 2025

G01_Branzi_Ph_CorsoComo10 — Andrea Branzi, Ph Corso Como10

G03_Mostre 2025_Easier — Easier to BreatheAlone, Courtesy Jordan Watson

G04_Battaglia — Quartiere Cala. La bambina con il pallone. Palermo, 1980, Ph. Archivio Letizia Battaglia

MACHINE HALLUCINATIONS: LNM – CORAL

Ennova Art Museum Langfang (China, until May). On display is a collection of digital coral sculptures whose three-dimensional evolutions arise from the processing of specific data: about 100 million images of the seabed that the algorithm renders for us in an immersive dimension not so much to simulate the ocean habitat, but to make us reflect on the criticality of an ecosystem in a state of great frailty. These and many other urgencies are the starting point of a research that has lasted for 10 years and that the Turkish-American artist has decided to collect in Dataland: the project of the first artificial intelligence museum that will open in Los Angeles in a few months. An unprecedented revolution.
Dove: Ennova Art Museum Langfang
Quando: until 7 May 2025

SUNDAY

Curated by Maurizio Cattelan, To celebrate its 15th anniversary, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is inaugurating a retrospective devoted to the theme of leisure. The works selected by the Italian artist from the Centre Pompidou in Paris have the task of presenting a broad reflection on the most enigmatic day of the week: Sunday. Emblematic pieces, such as the wall of André Breton’s study and Marcel Duchamp’s chess table, offer insights into the social, political and aesthetic aspects of leisure that elicit reflections on working time, public and private space and spirituality. The exhibition will be divided into twenty-seven sections, each inspired by literary, poetic and musical texts, following an alphabetical organization that recalls the method of Gilles Deleuze. Under the guidance of the maestro Vinii Revlon, the whole museum will come alive with dancing, music and workshops devoted to the culture of voguing, involving the public in a fusion of art and performance.
Where: Centre Pompidou-Metz
When: From 8 May 2025 to 2 February 2027

ITALIA IN MOVIMENTO. Autostrade e futuro

curated by Pippo Ciorra with Angela Parente, One hundred years since the construction of Italy’s first motorway, the story of a century of travel: the exhibition reveals how motorways have shaped the landscape, society and imagination of a whole country. The Italian motorway is not just an infrastructure: it is a ribbon entwined with modernity and memory, connecting places, people and stories. With the heroic impulses of the twentieth century, the acceleration in post-war production and the eco-sustainable scenarios of the future, the exhibition is an invitation to rediscover Italy as millions of travelers have experienced it, over the course of the various eras. Between archival projects, authorial photographs, evolving maps and iconic images, the exhibition accompanies the visitor along a spectacular space-time itinerary, made up of the history of motorways as well as its recurrent places and themes. The four sections of the exhibition celebrate the role of the motorway as a protagonist of everyday life and collective storytelling.
Where: Museo MAXXI, Rome
When: until 2 February 2025

MEMORIALE 14 Agosto 2018

A place of respect and memory, of testimony and denunciation in memory of the 43 victims of the collapse of the Morandi Bridge on 14 August 2018. The Memorial designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti is an intimate and meditative space, with access from a reserved entrance on Via Campi. Video and audio materials, documentation, personal accounts, memories and a part of the rubble of the Morandi Bridge are the architecture of a narrative that follows a precise thematic sequence: from the original engineering work to the memory of the tragedy, each thematic station offers the visitor the opportunity to identify with the victims’ families and the community that they belong to. An experience that nurtures the cords of empathy and invites us not to forget. The Bioclimatic Greenhouse, integrated into the form of the existing building, with its collection of species of trees and shrubs is an impulse to life.
Where: ex Pila 9 del Ponte Morandi, Genoa

FRANCO RAGGI. Pensieri instabili

Curated by Francesca Pellicciari and Marco Sammicheli with an exhibition design by Piovenefabi, Design Platform, Triennale. The fourth appointment at the Design Platform – a space at Triennale Milano devoted to contemporary design – is an exploration of Franco Raggi’s multifaceted output. Architect, designer and intellectual of design, active on the Italian and international scene for half a century, the exhibition develops themes loved and known by the public of the Museum of Italian Design (and beyond). Hosting the multifaceted creativity of the Italian Master, who veers from product to exhibition design, from interiors to publishing, is Piovenefabi’s textile installation: an eternal and contemporary architecture, a tribute to that rhetorical game of contrasts that so distinguishes his work.
Dove: Design Platform, Triennale, Milano
Quando: from 7 February to 13 April

IO CONTENGO MOLTITUDINI

By Marinella Senatore, Created in collaboration with about 60 residents of Rebibbia prison, and visible to the inmates and the entire community of the penitentiary until mid-February, the site-specific installation is an example of participatory art in its noblest form. Inaugurated on the occasion of the opening of the second Holy Door, the Dicastery, and curated by Cristiana Perrella, the work is presented as a vertical structure that evokes the machines used in the fireworks of Roman Baroque festivities. “In my practice, the works are above all shared and transformative experiences, a reflection of my ongoing commitment to active participation and collective collaboration,” says Senatore. The selected phrases, collected together with members of the community, are powerful expressions of hope entwined in a common narrative: the illuminations, inspired by the popular traditions of Southern Italy, have the ability to transform a place into a special space where special things can happen.
Where: in the square in front of the church of Rebibbia prison in Rome