It starts in the basement and proceeds to the ground floor of the former headquarters of Credito Italiano, we are talking about the exhibition that celebrates the 50 years of the Collezione Cassina iMaestri. With a setting dominated by industrial-style red lights – the color of Cassina – the art director Patricia Urquiola and the curator Federica Sala selected the sketches, the photographs, the prototypes, and the limited editions to summarize the philological research processes and collaborations with the foundations and heirs behind the reedition of the design of one of the most important architects of the Modern movement. What are the must-see pieces? The crystal radio designed by Franco Albini in 1938, completely disassembled, and the prototype of the 1949 Galaxy lamp, a design by Charles and Ray Eames which will go into production next year.
E.S

After having explored wood, glass and plastic, this year Alessi thought it was time to remember that they are 'metallari' deep down, as metalworking is at the origin of their studio. The location for the staging of Ars Metallica is the courtyard of the Palazzo Borromeo d'Adda, right in the centre of town, where tall silver curtains are the stage for rooms set up with new designs by Philippe Starck, Virgil Abloh and even limited edition Salvador Dalí. A special mention goes to the collective of the new brand Il Tornitore Matto, led by Alberto Alessi and coordinated by Giulio Iacchetti, which is based on the potter's wheel and involves a multigenerational group of international creatives.
L.M.

Among the many, many Fuorisalone installations that put plants centre stage, we choose for originality that of the gardening machinery company Stiga. In a purpose-built greenhouse, it is literally possible to make plants play thanks to a system of electrodes. The installation opens up to the city with Matteo Cibic's Garden Gurus, which the designer defines as "street clocks that tell the time of nature". For Cibic, who started from a re-reading of Jeremy Rifkin, getting in touch with nature is essential to regaining possession of time. In these hectic days, his installations are there to remind us of this.
A.S.

A dive into the history of Italian design, which grew up in the heart of Brianza among artisans and passionate entrepreneurs who were still living in the wave of energy of the economic boom. That's what the Gianfranco Frattini exhibition hosted in the frescoed rooms of Palazzo Arese Borromeo in Cesano Maderno, in the Milanese hinterland, offers. Open until May 14, it presents the Italian designer's extensive production divided by typology: original works taken from collectors' archives, reissues and new experiments, as well as a selection of original sketches and drawings of architectural projects, courtesy of the collaboration with the Parma Center for Studies and Archives of Communication and the Milan Polytechnic.
L.M.

Take one of Nike's most innovative, radical and (why not?) original design departments and showcase it as if it were a bakery. Or better, a panettone factory. All this just a stone's throw away from a landmark of the Fuorisalone, the site of the first Alcova (now there is a construction site for new buildings). Ispa stands for improvise, scavenge, protect and adapt: a design approach recounted in three rooms, amidst suggestions of materials (seaweed!) and technologies, 3D printing and shoes that turn into skate wheels, where everything is transformed, changed, recycled and readapted. Nike arrives at the end of the Fuorisalone week but makes its mark. And if you want to delve deeper, there are also workshops.