From April 20–26, 2026, Alcova returns for its eleventh edition during Milan Design Week. The curatorial and experimental platform founded by Joseph Grima and Valentina Ciuffi — which each year transforms forgotten or inaccessible spaces into a temporary microcosm of design research, often becoming as famous for its locations as for what takes place inside them — has chosen two symbolic sites of the city of Milan for this edition.
One marks a welcome return: the Baggio Military Hospital, which hosted Alcova in 2021 and 2022. The other is an absolute first. Villa Pestarini, the only villa ever designed by the great architect Franco Albini, will open its doors to the public for the first time in its 87-year history.
A white, rectangular volume set within a small island of greenery, Villa Pestarini is a gem of Milanese rationalist architecture, located just beyond the outer ring road and a few minutes’ walk from the Bande Nere metro station.
Albini designed it in the late 1930s as a private residence for a family — the same one that still preserves its memory today — and until now it has never been open to visitors. The project also stands as an exception in Albini’s career, as he was best known for his large-scale residential buildings and only rarely took on private commissions. Gio Ponti published the villa in Domus issue 144 in 1939.
Glass-block façades, a low-tread marble staircase, custom-designed furniture, sliding partitions, and large windows overlooking the garden: all the elements that make up the villa that will host Alcova in 2026 have remained intact, exactly as Albini envisioned them. It’s a miraculous case of preservation — rare in the world of private residences — and now, for the first (and perhaps only) time, it will be open to the public.
Continuing its journey ever farther from Milan’s city center, Alcova will connect the villa with the Baggio Military Hospital in the Primaticcio district — a vast complex originally built after the First World War — which will also open previously unseen spaces to visitors during the event: the church with its former rectory, and a historic archive.