There is a place, during this Design Week, where design is truly touched. It does not remain motionless behind a storefront or protected by the gaze of security guards, but waits to be used, moved, and put to the test. Base, in Tortona, which has always been a fundamental address of the Fuorisalone, does not open to visitors to show an absolute result, but to ask them questions. What will design be used for tomorrow? Who will make it? With what tools?
At Design Week, there’s a bench that can become anything: Smarin’s experiment at Base Milano
Not just to look at: at Base Milano, design gets active. Studio Smarin's modular system transforms the Ground Hall on the ground floor into a collective space between experimentation, economic sustainability and new forms of sharing.
Photo Carlotta Coppo
Photo Carta Carbone
Photo Carta Carbone
Photo Carta Carbone
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- La redazione di Domus
- 23 April 2026
Base explores these questions through an experimental approach that crosses all its spaces: in the rooms of casaBase, five international designers work and sleep next to their projects, transforming the guesthouse into a temporary home-studio. On the roof of the warehouse, however, a group of students has set up tents and inhabits for a week a temporary urban campsite that is an observatory from which to look at the city during Design Week.
It is a simple object that does a difficult thing: transform one room into many different rooms.
But the most concrete answer is in the Ground Hall, where the French studio Smarin has positioned a few dozen identical units of the Re-U system, a kind of modular wooden bench that, combined with others like it, becomes anything: agora, screening room, workspace, convivial area, stage. In the first few days, we have already seen its function change several times. It is a simple object that does a difficult thing: transforming one environment into many different environments.
Smarin is a studio founded in Nice by Stéphanie Marin, who for twenty years has been designing and self-producing furniture-systems intended to transform collective space. Her works have ended up in the collections of the Centre Pompidou and the Vitra Design Museum. To inspire this installation was the theme of economic sustainability: Design Week should be a privileged moment of encounter between professionals, enthusiasts, and clients, but the prohibitive costs of spaces, services, and accommodation end up cutting out many of those who should be its protagonists. The Re-U modular system tries to respond to this contradiction: a space that adapts and serves everyone, in line with the vision of Base, which for years has been experimenting with concrete forms of hospitality and support for the creative community. The project is realized in partnership with the Institut français Milano and curated by art and design historian Emanuele Quinz, who will dialogue with Smarin during the talk “Idiorythmia — a first spark for a rhythmic approach to design,” moderated by Alessandro Scarano, web editor of Domus, on April 23 at 5:00 PM.
Opening image:Photo Paper Coal