The second day of Design Week is when you really start to understand how to approach it. The Salone opens, the city finds its rhythm, and above all, hierarchies begin to emerge—or at least appear to. It’s the moment when you stop trying to see everything and start choosing, even though choosing, in Milan, is always something of an illusion. Because the point isn’t so much what to see, but how to move between things: between a sought-after pause and an unavoidable crowd, between an installation that promises introspection and another that already exists to be photographed. Meanwhile, the city organizes itself into flows, with districts that are increasingly recognizable and interconnected, while the miles walked begin to take their toll. If you try to map out a route, the second day of Design Week almost seems to organize itself. It begins with a search for calm—the kind promised by Zara at the Palazzina Appiani—then moves through installations that work by subtraction, like the analog bubble by USM and Snøhetta, before arriving at spaces that ask to be crossed and inhabited, such as Convey’s open apartment building. In between, there are more material explorations, like Hannes Peer’s underground marble house. It’s a journey that alternates between fullness and emptiness, introspection and sociability, ultimately offering a fairly precise image of this edition: fewer objects, more experiences—and above all, more ways of inhabiting space.

Design Week is beautiful. But Design Week is also incredibly stressful. It has barely begun, and in Milan we’ve already had sunshine, rain, and even hail. We’ve already walked miles in our shoes. It’s only natural that a place to unwind feels like an oasis in the desert. It’s curious that this sense of calm is offered by a brand most commonly associated with fast fashion—Zara. It takes place in the Palazzina Appiani, a stunning neoclassical building overlooking the Arena Civica, designed for Napoleon and often overlooked even by Milanese locals. The installation, created with Crosby Studios, draws inspiration from the logic of ancient Roman baths, constructing a sequence of spaces—entrance, corridor, central hall, and loggia—designed more to slow visitors down than to amaze them. In the end, though, more than a contemplative experience, it’s primarily a photo opportunity: the star is a long, steaming pool that visually evokes thermal baths. We can already predict a flurry of selfies. Then you step out onto the terrace, look over the park, and finally relax for real. That’s all there is to it—but for those who care about their Instagram, or want to discover a lesser-known yet utterly charming piece of Milanese architecture, it’s probably worth it. Alessandro Scarano

Hannes Peer Architecture has designed, for Margraf, an open-plan space that functions as a home where virtually every surface is clad in marble. The installation occupies an underground space hidden beneath the garden of a historic villa in the heart of Brera, transforming what is typically a parking area into an immersive experience centered on the exploration of stone materials. The challenge was to create a domestic environment while eliminating movable elements and any kind of interface, favoring continuous, clean surfaces that fully reveal the graphic qualities of different marbles. As a result, all volumes—including several anthropomorphic sculptures by Peer himself—as well as horizontal and vertical surfaces, showcase a portion of the vast range of possibilities offered by this single material matrix. Binding together the diverse intrusions of marble and precious stones is the widespread presence of Santafiora stone, quarried in Tuscany and recently acquired by the company, here explored through various applications and treatments. A patio welcomes visitors and, with the continuous sound of water falling from ceiling to floor, adds an acoustic dimension to the installation. Nicola Aprile

If, for you, design at Fuorisalone is an excuse to step inside other people’s homes, then you should know that this year Convey is opening an entire apartment building. Floor by floor, each unit is inhabited by the projects of emerging designers and experiments by new brands. On the staircases and doorsteps, there’s a constant flow of people coming and going—designers from all over the world who have come to Milan to present their vision of design. The duo Joshi/Greene reinterprets the ladder system used by the Shaker community in aluminum, turning it into a true architectural device, while upstairs Archivio Uno makes a stop as part of its traveling project across Italy, making issues 0 and 1 of hundreds of international magazines accessible—some of which no longer exist. Sarah Espeute transforms oversized shirts and trousers into curtains, while the psychedelic graphics of a particular variegated concrete celebrate the debut of the new Italian brand Gllìa, in an installation curated by Studio Næssi. Nicola Aprile

Hermès’ installation at La Pelota on Via Palermo is a new presence in what has become a familiar venue. This time, it is the relationship with the modernist architecture of the former sferisterio that guides the narrative of the Maison’s new home collections. The dim light gently lifts, revealing counters, wood surfaces, and mosaic-clad columns, leading into a “white cube” structured around varying distances of perception. Through a long horizontal window, visitors glimpse an almost urban landscape of white solids, along with the only distant view of a porcelain set perched atop a volume too high to be observed from the ground. Step inside the luminous box, however, and the placement of blankets and textiles inevitably draws the eye toward detail, sparking an appreciation for craftsmanship—and, ultimately, for the brand’s identity. “The material speaks, the object tells a story” is the theme chosen this year by Charlotte Macaux Perelman, architect and artistic director of Hermès Home alongside Alexis Fabry. The narrative structure rests on the metal of new vases, the embroidery-like stitching of cashmere blankets, and the rich interplay of Carrara marble and Verde Alpi in the new Stadium table by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby.

Giovanni Comoglio

In the courtyard of Fondazione Luigi Rovati, the provocation repeatedly launched by USM takes physical form: that its modular metal furniture system could, in theory, expand infinitely. Here, the structure designed by Snøhetta in collaboration with Annabelle Schneider extends in every direction, refusing the notion of an endpoint and instead outlining jagged, open boundaries. Within this metallic skeleton, a large white fabric bubble creates a space to enter and experience an environment entirely free of screens, digital devices, or artificial intelligence—just empty space and sunlight filtering through the surface. Its softness reshapes the perception of USM as a rigid, orthogonal system, and through emptiness and absence, it fosters a reconnection with reality and a deeper awareness of space, the people within it, and the ground beneath their feet (you enter without shoes). Inside the bubble, the “analog” experience is so powerful that visitors often grow attached to its niches. “I love this one!” Annabelle Schneider told us, pointing to a particular recess.

Nicola Aprile

Tomorrow, April 22, from 5:00 to 6:30 PM, Domus returns to the Politecnico di Milano for a talk with Ma Yansong, founder of MAD Architects, guest editor of the magazine in 2026, and one of the most influential figures in contemporary architecture. The Chinese architect will deliver a lecture titled “Architecture is not architecture,” focused on a radical rethinking of the discipline. This theme runs through his editorial project for Domus, challenging the traditional boundaries of architecture and opening it up to new cultural, social, and emotional dimensions.

Alessia Baranello