Much-anticipated Milan design platform Alcova has announced its locations for Fuorisalone 2026 (20-26 April). Guests descending on Milan for Design Week next year will once again be able to discover exclusive architectural locations in the city, filled with groundbreaking, emerging and independent design.
For 2026, Alcova will return to the design city (after two editions in Varedo, north of Milan) and revisits its former venue of the Baggio Military Hospital as well as Franco Albini’s Rationalist Villa Pestarini.
‘Together, these two locations form an architectural dialogue between preservation and reinvention,’ say Alcova founders, Valentina Ciuffi and Joseph Grima. ‘Within this framework, Alcova will once again host a constellation of designers, studios, companies, and institutions: a temporary microcosm of the creative voices shaping design culture today.
Villa Pestarini
(Image credit: Luigi Fiano)
(Image credit: Luigi Fiano)
Franco Albini’s Rationalist gem Villa Pestarini dates back to 1939, when the architect was just 33 years old. The restrained geometry of the villa’s architecture once again serves as a domestic background to the Alcova displays (after two years within the modernist environs of Villa Borsani).
(Image credit: Luigi Fiano)
(Image credit: Luigi Fiano)
Featuring a white rectangular structure, glass-brick facades and floodlit spaces, the villa has been preserved over the years by its owners who have honoured Albini’s vision.
‘The house remains an almost miraculous testimony to Albini’s unique balance of discipline and poetry, and one of the most authentic expressions of recurring themes in his work,’ reads a note accompanying the announcement. Among the house’s feature are an effortless marble staircase, sliding room partitions and original custom-made furnishings that contribute to a combination of ‘discipline and poetry.’
Baggio Military Hospital
(Image credit: Piergiorgio Sorgetti)
(Image credit: Piergiorgio Sorgetti)
Visitors to Alcova 2022 may remember the Centro Ospedaliero Militare di Baggio, a former military hospital whose abandoned spaces perfectly embody the design event’s radical approach to the city’s architecture mixed with innovative design concepts.
(Image credit: Piergiorgio Sorgetti)
(Image credit: Piergiorgio Sorgetti)
For this new edition, Alcova welcomes its guests to new and unseen spaces within the complex, including a church and historic archive, offering a multilayered experience to those visiting the exhibition. ‘Over time, the complex has continued to evolve, poetically weaving the built and natural landscapes together into an ever-changing ecosystem that blurs the boundary between natural and man-made,’ says a note introducing the building.
(Image credit: Piergiorgio Sorgetti)
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