Salone del Mobile.Milano 2025: all the news you need to know about

Euroluce 2025: the first edition of The Euroluce International Lighting Forum  

After the 2023 success of The City of Light, expectation is running high for the return of Euroluce with over 300 exhibitors, 46.5% of whom will be from abroad. 

Light will take on an increasingly central role in the integrated and sustainable design of public and private spaces, putting the quality of life and the future of our planet at the centre. From this standpoint, we set out to imagine the first edition of The Euroluce International Lighting Forum, a hub of knowledge and innovation for the future of lighting design, conscious that the trade fair must pay attention synergistically to both the commercial offering and to the educational, informative and visionary demands and needs of professionals within the sector.  

The project − directed by Annalisa Rosso with the collaboration of APIL – will stimulate the exchange of ideas and promoting innovation in the lighting world. A two-day event (April 10th and 11th) split into 6 masterclasses, 2 round tables and 2 workshops, hosted in The Forest of Space Arena (Pav. 2), designed by the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, one of the most on-trend architects of the last decade, creator of the Grand Ring, a wooden structure with a 2km circumference that will surround the national pavilions of the countries attending the Expo 2025 Osaka. In the same way, The Forest of Space Arena, a project curated by VIV Arts, will be built at Euroluce using vertically arranged natural pine beams, drawing inspiration from the organic vitality of forests and transforming the space into a fluid, layered experience that will encompass those who enter it, like a forest. An example of the intersection of art and architecture, which, as Oliva Sartogo, co-founder of VIV Arts, has said, conveys a new way of experiencing public space that is fluid, organic and open to transformation. The Arena embraces the principles of biophilic design, integrating nature into architecture and promoting a modular and adaptable language capable of rethinking public spaces as more open, inclusive and participatory places.  

Under the heading Light for Life, Light for Spaces, there will be masterclasses, panel discussions and workshops, led by twenty international speakers including lighting designers, architects, artists, set designers, scientists, biologists, anthropologists, astronomers, and psychologists invited to share visions, insights, and research and design practices geared to stimulating a deeper understanding of the future of lighting. Light will, thus, be addressed not only in terms of its technological potential, but also through anthropological and philosophical reflection to understand what will guide its design in tomorrow's inhabited space. 

The talks scheduled for 10th April will be organised under the theme Light for Life. Starting from the assumption that humans are born to live outdoors, where natural light influences them both biologically and psychologically, but that artificial lighting can also shape biological rhythms, influence emotions and define psychophysical balances, is there a simple, scientific way to design positive lighting for humans and their wellbeing? For their happiness and comfort? What do we mean when we talk about Human Centric Lighting? These and many other questions on how lighting can actually improve quality of life by optimising energy and health will be answered by the speakers on the first day. Kicking off with a Masterclass by Solar Designer Marjan van Aubel, who has always observed sunlight and wondered how this form of democratic energy could be used widely, as addressed in the Sunne project; followed by Stefano Mancuso, a pioneer in plant neurobiology, who will explore how humans can be inspired by the strategies adopted by plants to capture light and transform it into a source of well-being; and Robert Wilson, a renowned American artist, who will discuss his approach to light. In the afternoon, there will be a Round Table featuring Nicholas Belfield, a partner in dpa lighting consultants, an international lighting design firm that has chalked up more than 7,500 completed projects in 80 countries, including The Constellation, The Founder's Memorial, Abu Dhabi; Rogier van der Heide, a lighting designer who has lit some of the most iconic collective spaces, from the Olympic Stadium in Beijing to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; Shelley James, a lighting strategy consultant at Age of Light Innovations and an international expert on light and wellness; Manuel Spitschan, since 2022 a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics who also serves as Professor of Chronobiology & Health at the Technical University of Munich; Piero Benvenuti, Professor Emeritus of Astrophysics at the University of Padua. Finally, the afternoon workshop will offer a practical and concrete analysis, bringing together all the themes, concepts and perspectives addressed on this first day. 
 

Special guests: Pierre-Yves Rochon, Paolo Sorrentino and Robert Wilson 

For the 63rd edition, in halls 13 and 15 hosting the new A Luxury Way,  the French architect Pierre-Yves Rochon with creating an installation affirming the importance of time and experience in interior design inspired by tradition, yet reinterpreted in a contemporary key. The goal was to valorise the legacy of the past and project it into the future. A chameleon-like designer and master of luxury hospitality, Pierre-Yves Rochon, at the helm of his eponymous interior design studio, has devoted 45 years to the pursuit of true absolute luxury, designing prestigious interiors for hotellerie chains such as Four Seasons, Ritz, Fairmont, and Waldorf Astoria and restaurants for Michelin chefs such as Joël Robuchon and Alain Ducasse.

He has conceived Villa Héritage for the Salone, a space in which design becomes a shared and timeless idiom, capable of bringing all the arts into dialogue and making people reflect on the idea of transmission. Elegant and evocative, Villa Héritage redefines the concept of interior design, transforming it into a bridge that connects memory and innovation and where luxury is not just aesthetics, but a multi-sensory experience made up of harmony, culture and timeless charm. Villa Héritage has been designed in the shape of a square: the installation welcomes, inviting pause and reflection and expressing a discreet, silent beauty that can be perceived without necessarily being explained. Each room is a chapter in a story, in which design and the arts are intertwined. T

After David Lynch, who brought his latest major project ‘Interiors. A Thinking Room', it's Paolo Sorrentino turn. Entitled La dolce attesa, the filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino's project-installation for the 2025 Salone is a timeless space, an invisible bridge between present and future, where desire is intertwined with the fear of meeting one’s destiny. A void to be filled or an opportunity to be seized. Because, as the Oscarwinning director states, "Waiting is agony. The sweet anticipation is a journey. A stunning and mesmerising one." A middle ground where everything is still possible, where everything can − or could − be sweeter. True to Sorrentino's visionary approach, La dolce attesa, set up at the entrance to Pavilions 22-24 can be seen as a metaphor for existence; it will offer an opportunity to stop and catch one’s breath in order to find beauty in slow-moving time, teaching us the value of patience. A metaphor for living, in which everything is suspended yet, paradoxically, everything happens. For La dolce attesa, Paolo Sorrentino has chosen to bring in Margherita Palli, a set designer with a forty-year career that began with her lengthy collaboration with director Luca Ronconi, for whom she created the sets for more than sixty shows in Italy and around the world, from the Venice Biennale to the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, and La Scala to the Teatro di Roma. A recipient of many awards, and a sixtime winner of the UBU Prize, Margherita Palli has designed sets for the directors Liliana Cavani, Mario Martone, Alexander Sokurov, and choreographers Yang Jiang and Daniel Ezralow, as well as for Ronconi.

A light, art and sound project of rare intensity, Robert Wilson. Mother, with music by Arvo Pärt, at the Museo Pietà Rondanini – Castello Sforzesco in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan | Culture, will be the first Salone del Mobile.Milano 2025 installation to open to the public (6th April), forming an ideal bridge with Milano Art Week, and will then close on 18th May, allowing the city to book visits beyond the Design Week. In the year of Euroluce, the renowned American artist has created a “total work” dedicated to Michelangelo's masterpiece, recognised, along with Leonardo's Last Supper, as the most iconic work of art in Milan. In keeping with the setting designed by Michele De Lucchi in the Spanish Hospital in 2015, Wilson, an absolute master of the creative use of light, will give life to an installation, which will measure itself against the power of the 'unfinished', in dramaturgical dialogue with Stabat Mater, a medieval prayer in the vocal and instrumental version by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Salone 2025: the cultural programme  

Following last year's success, the 2025 edition of Talks and Round Tables will be back with a packed cultural programme, again entitled Drafting Futures. Conversations about Next Perspectives (Pavilion 14). Curated by Annalisa Rosso, Editorial Director & Cultural Events Advisor of the Salone, the programme will focus on the transmission of knowledge and experience, prompting reflection on the opportunities and responsibilities we have today towards a tomorrow that is already present. 

The new programme, in the dual formats of Talks (in the morning) and Round Tables (in the afternoon), will feature some of the most interesting personalities in international design, aimed at showing how planning, design, art, direction, set design and writing are able to decode the present and predict the future, triggering insight and imagination. To open the works will be Valeria Segovia (9th April), Principal and Design Director of Gensler in London, the world's largest architecture firm in terms of revenue and number of architects with clients in more than 100 countries − recognised as a talented architect who has always been committed to reducing environmental impact and improving the wellbeing of the communities with which she works. After all, one of the protagonists, Architect Bjarke Ingels (10th April), Founder and Creative Partner of Bjarke Ingels Group, will invite us to explore the ways in which materiality, technology and human interaction can redefine the future of urban planning. Lesley Lokko (11th April) − Architect, Curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of Biennale di Venezia, Founder of the African Futures Institute − will teach us that at the heart of every project is a princely and decisive tool: imagination. Paolo Sorrentino (12th April), Oscar Winner Filmmaker will conclude the Talks telling us about waiting, the theme of his installation project at the Salone, in dialogue with Antonio Monda, Journalist and Professor at New York University. 

The afternoon Round Table events will be devoted to discussions between authoritative voices on crucial areas of design and architecture today, under the headings The Business of Design: Global Perspectives on Trade, E-Commerce, and Distribution (10th April) and The Business of Hospitality: Where Design Meets Functionality (11th April).
 
The venue for this packed programme will be the Drafting Futures Arena, created by Formafantasma, recycling the seating from the last edition, which will host the Salone Library project for a second year: a selection of books suggested by the speakers themselves with light as their focus.  
 
The Talks will be recognised by the National Order of Architects (CNAPPC − National Council of Architects, Planners, Landscape Architects and Conservators) as accredited educational initiatives, each one of which will therefore be worth 2 credits. 

The 26th edition of the SaloneSatellite

Salone events in the city 

Once again this year, the Salone will be taking in Milan as part of the Milano Design Week with an international cultural programme – not just Robert Wilson. Mother, at the Museo Pietà Rondanini – Castello Sforzesco, in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan | Culture. For the fifth consecutive year, the Salone is renewing its ties with the Teatro alla Scala Foundation. Robert Wilson will be curating the official opening evening at La Scala with The Night Before. Object Chairs Opera, a journey through some of the most famous pieces of operatic repertoire that he has directed over the years. They will be performed by the Teatro alla Scala Orchestra, conducted by Michele Spotti, with the participation of the soprano Marina Rebeka. On stage will be a selection of "objects" and "chairs" from Wilson's historic sets.  

After the success of 2024, The Design Kiosk the Salone del Mobile landmark entrusted to Corraini Edizioni (a DWADesign Studio project), will also be back, again in Piazza della Scala (1st-13th April), providing a venue for a series of presentations (6pm). Next to the Design Kiosk, the three-dimensional Salone del Mobile.Milano calligraphic sign, renewed, in line with the event’s new coordinated image. Last but not least, the Salone will take over the city to an even greater extent than last year: more than 100 showrooms belonging to brands exhibiting at the Annual Exhibitions and Euroluce will join in the great design festival, featuring in the fuorisalone.it guide, and throwing open their doors to design lovers. With the aim of involving citizens and visitors, facilitating the flow of information during the Design Week, this year too Salone will be promoting the Welcome Project, in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan, Fondazione Fiera Milano, NABA, Nuova Accademia delle Belle Arti, IED Istituto Europeo di Design, Design School – Politecnico di Milano, and Domus Academy. More than 100 students will be involved, providing the public with information on the Salone and the main events in the city. 

Salone del Mobile 2025: partnerships and collaborations