David Rockwell’s Milan Design Week presentation is a love letter to cork

Rockwell Group, the architecture and design firm behind a suite of Nobu outposts, W hotels and theatre set designs, has collaborated with the world’s biggest cork supplier, Corticeira Amorim, to create a cork haven for Milan Design Week 2025.

Inside Casa Cork, the material is everywhere: there are tasselled cork tiebacks for the curtains, illuminated cork sconces designed by Rockwell Group and manufactured by Thomas Cooper Studio, and cork ‘parquet’ created by contrasting darker and lighter cork. A cork chandelier and bar are designed by Rockwell Group and Artemest (whose Milan apartment is another highlight of the week), and the fabrics, tiles and wall covers, all from 4Spaces, are made from the material.

Vignettes house all manner of cork curios from emerging and established designers and manufacturers, including the Campana Brothers, Tom Dixon and Made in Situ by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, which aim to showcase the material as one suited to collectible design as well as furniture. The eye is immediately drawn, however, to the exhibition’s dramatic centrepiece: a 3D-printed six-foot replica of a cork tree clad in virgin cork bark, created by Spanish workshop Factum Arte.

Why cork? David Rockwell is ‘obsessed’ with it, he says. ‘It's a material I've always loved. I had cork in my home as a kid, so it has deep memories, and the more I learn about it, the more interesting I think its applications are.’ Impermeable, buoyant, elastic and fire retardant, cork is unique, and even ages beautifully, ‘in a way that patinas like leather’. ‘To me, it is one of the best materials. It feels great. It's acoustically great. And it really is from the ground,’ he adds.

This goes to the heart of Casa Cork: cork is one of the world’s most sustainable materials. It comes from the harvested bark of the cork oak, meaning that the tree doesn’t need to be cut down. Plus, cork products can be recycled repeatedly and sequester CO₂ for decades. So why isn’t it used more? Rockwell ‘genuinely couldn’t tell you’.

‘I like to find areas where, as designers and architects, we can make a difference,’ he says. ‘So when I discovered that this material was available in the form of 2.9 billion unrecycled wine corks per year, I thought we could start to make people think about what to do with that.’

Less than one per cent of the 13 billion wine corks that are produced worldwide annually are recycled – to Rockwell’s mind, this is an incredible untapped resource. His studio has partnered, therefore, with nonprofit Cork Collective, which envisions a ‘closed loop’ system when it comes to cork, repurposing stoppers from over 40 restaurants, hotels and stores in New York and using them for community projects such as playground revitalisation.

‘Cork is an example of a circular economy because you can take the material, grind it, make a structure, and in ten years regrind it and make something else,’ says Rockwell. Casa Cork’s tree, therefore, becomes a metaphor for the tree of life, giving life not just to the exhibition and everything in it, but also to the planet with its miracle bark.

‘Sustainability is no longer an optional thing,’ continues the architect. ‘I think it's a cornerstone of all good design.’ Designers are ‘totally open’ to using sustainable materials, he says; with Casa Cork, he wanted to get them ‘interested’.

The exhibition achieves this by allowing audiences to ‘participate in it, touch it, feel it, understand it’; Casa Cork is not a traditional showroom, but rather an interactive, communal hub. You can have a coffee sitting on one of the cork chairs, order a drink from the cork bar, or attend one of the live discussions that will be held there this week. ‘At a place like Milan Design Week, when you're spending days looking at things, having a place that welcomes you, where you can have a conversation, presents a deeper way to learn,’ says Rockwell.

The installation also displays pieces from a student design competition, which serve to broaden one's mind about the possible uses of cork: 'Desculpe Desculpe' by Emily Kaline, for example, is a cork headpiece designed for gallery spaces that serves to narrow the wearer’s field of vision and insulate against noise. The 'Krystyna Luminaire' by Katarzyna Kubrak is a lampshade textured through the use of a virgin cork blow mould, which replicates the texture of virgin cork bark (and highlights its fire-retardant properties).

This collection, says Rockwell, poses ‘a chance to be a thought starter’. ‘I think designers don't always recognise how much they can do to take little steps to make things better. The community is amazing – I see more and more collaborations, groups trying to work together. I'm an optimist. I think as a designer you have to be an optimist.’

rockwellgroup.com
amorim.com
corkcollective.org

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