Milan is about to come alive again. With the advent of spring, Milan starts to transform. The pace of life in Milan increases, its energy levels rise, and there is an air of anticipation. A change is evident, though small, as windows open a little wider, the streets get brighter, and conversations start focusing on what’s to come. Milan Design Week 2026 is just around the corner, and along with it comes the most vibrant, dynamic, and immersive experience of the year. Milan is not Milan for a week; it becomes something else entirely. The streets become meeting points, courtyards become exhibition spaces, and every nook seems to be home to some new thought. The lines between public and private space become blurred as homes, studios, and some unknown space open up for a global audience. Designers, artists, and minds from around the world converge here, and it is a space of constant exchange, discovery, and serendipity. It is a space where the city is not just hosting design; it becomes design itself.

But beyond this concentration of events, beyond this movement, there is another, more hidden side of Design Week, one that takes place in exhibitions that encourage thought, not emotion. And it is from this perspective that we can speak of another side of design, not just as a means of innovation and aesthetic exploration, but as a cultural and symbolic practice, closely linked to our way of being in the world.  

“Beyond function and form, design returns to what it has always been: a way of making the world inhabitable.”

In the midst of all this, beyond the noise and the spectacle, there are projects that deserve a deeper kind of attention. La Casa Magica, presented by Nilufar and curated by Valentina Ciuffi, is one of them. La Casa Magica rethinks the very idea of domestic space. Before the house became a question of comfort, function, or style, it was something more layered: a symbolic shelter, a place of protection, a space where intimacy intertwines with belief, ritual, and the unseen.

The exhibition moves away from a neutral, purely functional understanding of the home and restores its original dimension: as a ritual site, a generator of meaning, a device through which we relate to the world. Here, objects are not passive elements of décor; they become active presences, capable of shaping emotions, narratives, and experiences.

According to this perspective, a group of international designers plays a part in the construction of a shared narrative, which travels through space, matter, and symbolic codes. The designers' work, though heterogeneous, is also highly interconnected and examines the house as a space of memory, protection, and transformation, where objects can be imbued with meaning and become tools of re-enchantment.

Among them, Anita Morvillo, Anna Zoe Hamm, Sonia Gorecka, and Clara Schweers work with the symbolic and ritualistic aspects of the domestic, as well as the experimental approaches of Made by Astronauts, David Aliperti, and Flora Manon. The conversation develops through the work of Davide Monaldi, Kym Ellery, and AB+AC Architects, and further through the work of Pauline Esparon, Emily Thurman, Etienne Marc, Christian Pellizzari, Filippo Carandini, among others, to create a multifaceted discussion of contemporary domestic mythologies.

The exhibition, which brings designers from different cultural and geographical backgrounds together, examines the relationship between design and belief. The works featured in the exhibition not only reference the traditions from which they emerge but also enact them. They are contemporary talismans, which can re-enchant the spaces we live in.

However, at the center of the exhibition, there is a reflection that appears especially relevant in the present day: the need for humans to believe. In a world characterized by uncertainty and instability, believing reappears, no longer as a naive act, but as a necessary one. It becomes a way of facing complexity, of giving meaning back, of making the world inhabitable again.

This theme has a connection with anthropological and philosophical thought. The notion of “symbolic efficacy”, as defined by Claude Lévi-Strauss, implies that symbols are effective not in a scientifically demonstrable way, but as part of a system of meaning in which they are embedded. In the context of domestic space, this means that objects may be seen as having a capacity for action, for changing perception and experience.

The exhibition is also connected with Gaston Bachelard’s concept of a house as an intimate and imaginative space, as well as with Ernesto De Martino’s understanding of a home as a space where people constantly reaffirm their presence in the world. Even the most quotidian of actions, such as arranging objects, demarcating space, or lighting a space, is imbued with symbolic meaning.

In this context, the designers’ interpretation of these concepts takes tangible shape. The mirrors function as portals of self-perception, fabrics transform into boundaries between memory and the present, and plants take on symbolic protective qualities. Light, too, ceases to be merely a utility and assumes a narrative, symbolic character. The significance of materials like wax, metal, or wood, as well as references to rituals and folklore, acquire a new, modern understanding.

What is most interesting in La Casa Magica, however, is its ability to avoid the trap of nostalgia and, at the same time, propose new ways of relating to the present, a positive notion of the ability of design to connect, as it did in the past, to the invisible, emotional, and symbolic realms of reality.

In the midst of the frenetic activity of Milan Design Week, La Casa Magica is a pause, a reflection, a call to think not only about what we see, but about what we feel, what we think, what we believe.

As Milan prepares to welcome the world once again, the exhibition opens up a broader reflection: if design has the power to shape not only spaces but also beliefs, rituals, and emotional landscapes, how do we choose to inhabit it today? In a time that often prioritizes function, speed, and efficiency, can we still make room for symbols, for intuition, for those invisible forces that help us make sense of the world—and what role can design play in re-enchanting the way we live?

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Words: Simone Lorusso