In the contemporary design scenario, objects are not the protagonists anymore. The ability to create connections among people, brands, cities, and cultures is what makes this discipline so special. One can safely say that Milan Design Week is the perfect example of this approach. In this new scenario, innovative forms are surfacing. These forms go way beyond the old-fashioned rules of trade shows and studios, focusing on experience, temporariness, and connections. Convey is one such example.

Launched in 2023 by Simple Flair, Convey was conceived as an international platform for design companies navigating unexplored territories. These are businesses that run through a combination of hybrid approach, identity, and global perspective but are usually missing a common ground that could foster their development and collaboration. The Convey brand is an answer to this demand, offering a platform for alignment, communication, and visibility.  

"The ambition behind Convey has always been to create “a nomadic and temporary place where design becomes a relationship.”

— Riccardo Crenna, CEO and co-founder of Simple Flair

Image courtesy of Cimento


Now in its fourth edition, Convey takes a decisive step forward with CONVEY BUILDING, an ambitious new format that will unfold from April 20 to 26, 2026. For one week, an entire building in the Torre Velasca/Missori area will be transformed into a destination for Milan Design Week. Spread across five floors and hosting more than 20 international brands, the project reimagines the exhibition as a vertical ecosystem, where different layers of experience overlap and reinforce one another.

“Design today is not only about objects,” he notes, “it’s about connections—between brands and people, between Milan and the world.”

— Riccardo Crenna, CEO and co-founder of Simple Flair


The decision to take over an entire building stems precisely from this vision. A single, unified space allows for a more immersive and coherent experience, where the boundaries between exhibition, event, and social moment begin to blur.  At its core, the project finds expression in the building’s panoramic terrace: a place to gather, exchange, and momentarily step back to look at design from a broader perspective.

Image courtesy of Completed Works

Simone Lorusso: Riccardo, you describe Convey as a “platform” rather than an exhibition. What does this shift reveal about how power and visibility are being redistributed in the design industry today?

Riccardo Crenna: I think that defining a project as a platform rather than simply as an exhibition means acknowledging a very clear shift: visibility no longer comes only from the object on display or from being present within an institutional context, but from the ability to activate relationships, conversations, context, and meaning. For a long time, power in design was concentrated in a few places and within a few mechanisms of legitimisation. That system still exists today, but it has opened up. Brands, designers, media, curators, communities, and professionals all contribute in a more fluid way to the construction of value and relevance. 

Convey was born from precisely this awareness. It does not want to be only a space in which to show something, but a temporary infrastructure that helps generate connections, alignment, positioning, and real opportunities. In that sense, the platform does not replace the exhibition, it expands it. It gives it a more contemporary, more relational, and, I believe, also more democratic dimension.

SL: The idea of a “nomadic and temporary place” is central to Convey. Is this a response to the instability of contemporary cultural and economic systems, or a deliberate strategy to remain flexible and critical?

RC: I would say both. On one hand, it is inevitably a response to the time we live in: a time in which economic, cultural, and even geographical systems are far less stable than they once were. But on the other hand, it is also a deliberate choice.

For us, temporariness is not a weakness, it is a form of freedom. It means being able to read the present more carefully, adapt, change shape, and avoid becoming rigid within a fixed format or a self-referential structure. Being nomadic allows us to remain open, to take nothing for granted, and to build each edition as a specific response to a context, a moment, and a need. There is also a critical aspect to this. Today, many formats risk repeating themselves until they become predictable. Convey, instead, tries to maintain a living tension, an ability to evolve. Its identity does not lie in the repetition of a formula, but in the consistency of a point of view.



Image courtesy of Completed Works & Terraformae

"CONVEY BUILDING comes from the desire to give a stronger temporary home to an energy we had already seen emerging”

— Riccardo Crenna, CEO and co-founder of Simple Flair

SL: What have you learned from the previous editions that directly shaped the CONVEY BUILDING format?

RC: We have learned that people are not only looking for something to see, they are looking for a context in which they can orient themselves, recognise themselves, and build relationships. In previous editions, we understood that the real value of Convey emerged when the exhibition dimension became intertwined with the human one: encounters, conversations, informal moments, and the possibility of moving from one brand to another within a coherent narrative. We also understood that the experience needed greater depth. Not simply a sequence of presences, but a clearer, more immersive, more legible ecosystem.

CONVEY BUILDING comes from this: from the desire to give a stronger temporary home to an energy we had already seen emerging. Another important lesson was realising that brands increasingly value contexts in which they are not isolated, but placed within a broader curatorial dialogue. This creates a different quality of visibility. Less noise, more meaning.

SL: Convey takes over an entire building this year. What was the moment when you realized that scaling up in this way was necessary?

RC: There was not one single moment, but rather a gradual realisation. Edition after edition, we saw that Convey was generating a density of relationships, content, and interest that could no longer be contained within a smaller format without losing something essential.

At a certain point, we understood that it no longer made sense to think only in terms of exhibition space, but in terms of a complete experience. An entire building allowed us to construct a more articulated narrative, give brands the right amount of space, create different intensities of engagement, and above all allow exhibition, encounter, pause, discovery, and sociability to coexist within one single system. In this case, growth was not driven by the desire to make something bigger for the sake of it. It was the natural consequence of an idea that, in order to remain coherent with itself, needed a different scale.



Image courtesy of Joshi Greene

" I believe design still has that capacity, but it depends very much on how it chooses to use its voice. ”

— Riccardo Crenna, CEO and co-founder of Simple Flair

SL: The building format creates a contained, almost curated microcosm within the city. Do you see this as a way to simplify the overwhelming nature of Milan Design Week, or as a statement about the need for more controlled and intentional environments?

RC: Definitely both. Milan Design Week is extraordinary precisely because of its  widespread energy, but it is also a highly saturated context, at times quite dispersive. In that scenario, creating a place that is clear, legible, and intentional becomes almost a necessary gesture.

I do not see it, however, as an attempt to simplify in a reductive sense, but rather as a way of offering a different quality of experience. A well-constructed microcosm allows people to truly engage with what they are seeing, without being overwhelmed by a constant excess of stimuli. I think there is a growing need today for more curated contexts, not in order to close oneself off from the city, but to create better conditions for attention, dialogue, and memory. In that sense, CONVEY BUILDING wants to be an intentional environment: open, but not casual; dynamic, but not chaotic.

SL: In your view, is design still capable of addressing social and political issues, or has it become too embedded in market logic?

RC: I believe design still has that capacity, but it depends very much on how it chooses to use its voice. It is clear that design today is deeply intertwined with the market, with brands, and with communication, and it would be naïve to pretend otherwise. But for that very reason, it becomes even more important to ask what kind of imagery, behaviour, or vision of the world it is helping to construct.

Design does not address social and political issues only when it produces explicit manifestos. It also does so when it shapes ways of living, inhabiting, relating, and consuming. In that sense, it still carries a very strong responsibility. The key point is to avoid reducing everything to language, surface, or trend. When design manages to maintain an authentic connection with reality, with people, and with the cultural changes taking place, then it can still be a relevant tool, not only a commercial one.

Image courtesy of Ilode

SL: Do you think younger generations approach design differently—both as consumers and as professionals? If so, how does Convey respond to that shift?

RC: Yes, I think the relationship has changed significantly. Younger generations seek less distance and less formality. They want to understand what lies behind a brand, which values it expresses, what kind of culture it proposes, and what kind of relationship it creates with its audience. They do not look only at the final product, but at the whole system surrounding it. As professionals, too, they seem far more used to moving in a hybrid way: across different disciplines, between physical and digital, between content and project, between image and strategy. Their approach is less rigid and more transversal.

Convey tries to respond to that shift by creating a context that does not sharply separate exhibition, communication, community, and conversation. It is a project designed to be lived, not simply visited. And I think that makes it closer to the contemporary sensibility of many younger professionals and observers of design.

SL: Finally, what would success look like for you at the end of this edition not in numbers, but in impact?

RC: For me, success would mean seeing that Convey has left something real in the people and the brands that pass through it. Not only a pleasant memory or a few successful images, but the feeling of having taken part in a context capable of generating ideas, relationships, and new possibilities. What matters to me is that those who enter feel they are not simply visiting an event, but stepping into an ecosystem with its own energy, its own vision, and its own human quality. And I want brands to feel that they have been placed in relation with the public and with the sector in a deeper, more intelligent, and more coherent way. If, by the end of the week, what remains is active connections, new conversations, future collaborations, and the sense that design can still be a space for authentic cultural exchange, then for me that will be the real success.



Image courtesy of Nyx Studio

As Convey continues to evolve as a platform rather than a fixed format, it raises a broader question: in an industry increasingly built on relationships and shared values, do we still need exhibitions or are we witnessing the emergence of something entirely different?

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Words: Simone Lorusso