Wallpaper* has once again taken up residence in the sweeping Curva space on the first floor of the Triennale di Milano for Milan Design Week 2025, with a showcase of global emerging talents from the world of design. Material Alchemists is both the title of the exhibition and the collective noun for Wallpaper’s Class of 2025: each designer or studio demonstrates a proclivity for material exploration and expression in their practice.
Our exhibitors are a truly global collective. Hailing from Antwerp and Adelaide to Vancouver and Vietnam, their creative identities, born through upbringing, education and professional practice, all feed into their lenses on life. A cultural narrative underpins much of their work, but it is the matter of material that we have zeroed in on. Working with everything from paper and plastic to rope and raffia, there is an inherent curiosity in our exhibitors about how matter can be coaxed, manipulated and transformed. We witness an interplay between expression, process and function, with exhibits spanning a spectrum from craft and artworks to high-performing quotidian objects. As such, Material Alchemists reflects our current behaviour in design. It is no longer an industry, but rather a broad term that encompasses every stage of the creation process.
Our partner for Material Alchemists is StoneX, a family company and global purveyor and patron of the world’s rarest natural stone. StoneX has built close relationships with the world’s finest quarry families, bringing to light their unique provenance and proud traditions. In partnership with geologists, it reveals the metamorphic stories of different stone varieties to build appreciation beyond the material’s surface value, guiding us to understand what makes a particular stone attractive, as well as helping us build an emotional connection with it. Through pioneering and careful refinement, StoneX ensures each stone’s natural properties are preserved and expressed. In the company’s own words, it is ‘committed to elevating the true value of stone through collaboration with pioneering artists, exploring the lexicon of this one-of-a-kind material’.
Our exhibition has been designed by our longstanding collaborators at DWA Design Studio, with plinths using Polygood panels from The Good Plastic Company, an Amsterdam-based pioneer in fully recycled and recyclable plastic sheet material for furniture, interior and architectural design. All the materials used in the exhibition design will be repurposed.
Exhibitors:
Abid Javed / Agnes Studio / Ajay Shah / Alfred Lowe / Astraeus Clarke / Dina Sur Natti / Federico Stefanovich / Jiri Krejcirik / Kodai Iwamoto / Lennart Engels / Liam Fleming / Marc Sweeney / Michelle Jiaxin Huang / Miranda Keyes / Morii Design / Olorunfemi Adewuyi / Pauline Leprince / Sheyang Li / Steffany Tran / Yoon Shun
'Material Alchemists' is at the Curva space in the Triennale di Milano from April 7th - 13th and is open to the public.
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