Villa saporiti

Contemporary Design Selection / Overview of contemporary design.

The Contemporary Design Selection returns for this edition. The group exhibition is curated for the fourth consecutive year by Giovanna Massoni and directed by Francesca Prandelli, Chief Coordinator of the festival. For its eighth edition, the Contemporary Design Selection invited independent designers, studios, planners, architects, artists, artisans, collectives, and galleries to explore and engage with the theme of the Border (Confine), through an open call launched in January.

This year, for the first time, the selection of exhibited pieces will be hosted within the spaces of Villa Saporiti, a splendid late-18th-century neoclassical building. The villa sits at the heart of the itinerary guiding visitors from the center of the city toward Villa del Grumello. Directly overlooking the lake, the building is unique for its centripetal layout and its grand elliptical salon—a very rare architectural feature in 18th-century Lombardy. The exterior alternates between understated elegance and monumentality, particularly on the lakeside facade, which is adorned with mythological statues and scenic decorations.

Saturnia - ArmoniusLab speaker, Elia Dusi

Porous Boundaries, Barbara Munsel ©Bertrand Bosredon

The selected projects of this eighth edition of the Contemporary Design Selection promise to be particularly rich in content, techniques, intentions and design quality. Lake Como, a land and water of borders par excellence, will for nine days become a meeting point, a threshold and a space of boundary-crossing for over fifty participants coming from some thirty countries: from the European continent to the Americas, through to Africa and both Eastern and Western Asia.

Functional objects, furniture and artefacts in fabric, ceramic, glass, resins, metal and wood, waste materials or biomaterials, are accompanied by reflections that broaden the contemporary debate on the role of design. Questions emerge relating to the value of craft production, to the still indispensable relationship with manufacturing realities, to collaborative practices, and to the social and political dimension of design.

Among the participants confirmed to date:

CONTEMPORARY
DESIGN SELECTION
Villa Saporiti
Passeggiata Lino Gelpi, Como
12-20 September 2026
10 AM - 7 PM
entrance with ticket