Eight designers to know from Rossana Orlandi Gallery’s Milan Design Week 2025 exhibition

The Milan Design Week schedule is always packed, but Wallpaper* editors never regret making time to visit Rossana Orlandi Gallery at 14 via Matteo Bandello. The space, which is housed in a former tie factory positioned around a courtyard draped in century-old strawberry grape vines, is a mecca for design.

At any one time, the gallery is home to a sprawling roster of exhibitors; for Milan Design Week 2025, Rossana Orlandi Gallery presented ‘RoCollectible 2025’, a showcase of over 90 designers.

Rossana Orlandi herself is a prominent gallerist who pivoted from a 30-year career in fashion to design, going on to launch the careers of prominent designers including Maarten Baas, Formafantasma, Nacho Carbonell and Piet Hein Eek. She curated ‘RoCollectible 2025’ with her daughter, Nicoletta Brugnoni, framing the exhibition as ‘a journey between matter, memory and beauty’. It presented a panorama of contemporary design with a focus on material exploration and aesthetic beauty.

Here are some of the standout exhibitors seen at Rossana Orlandi Gallery during Milan Design Week 2025.

BCXSY X Lobmeyr

Dutch-Japanese design collective BCXCY partnered with Viennese crystal manufacturer Lobmeyr to showcase two key lighting projects at RoCollectible 2025. ‘Ground Control’ is a portable light inspired by Lobyer’s ‘Metropolitan’ chandelier, featuring faceted crystals and precision-engineered hardware, infused with Space Age innovation and controlled via an app. The collaboration also includes ‘Archive Lights’, which draws from Lobmeyr's archive, collected over two centuries. ‘We wanted to take these pieces, which are normally just lying there collecting dust, and bring them back to life, creating a collection that literally and figuratively highlights them,’ says Boaz Cohen, one half of BCXSY. The lights contain exquisite crystal elements and chandelier components, illuminated by LED lights for a mesmerising effect.

Draga & Aurel

Draga & Aurel, founded in 2007 by Draga Obradovic and Aurel K Basedow, is a multidisciplinary art, design and furnishing studio. At Milan Design Week 2025, it showcased several pieces in a psychedelic mirrored space. ‘Phebe’ is a handmade pendant lamp made of Lucite and epoxy resin, while the ‘Cadre’ sideboard has an acrylic resin structure and sliding doors that create shifting colour compositions. The ‘Rescue Me’ series, meanwhile, is an upcycling project where discarded furniture is transformed with resin and fluorescent accents, creating tactile paintings (Draga & Aurel is considered something of a pioneer in upcycling). 'Our works emerge from a constant interplay of transparencies and layered materials and colours, always in flux,' say the designers. 'Our creations are dynamic and ever-changing – shifting with the light, the perspective, and the surrounding space.'

Aline Asmar d’Amman

Architect Aline Asmar d'Amman presented ‘The Power of Tenderness’, an exhibition described as an ‘invitation to softness in our interiors through the poetry of design’. D'Amman’s soft space featured her ‘Georgia’ lounge seating; the ‘Béton Littéraire’ (‘literary concrete’) bookshelves; candy-coloured onyx tables and more. To complete this confection of a collection, the architect collaborated with chef Cesare Murzilli to create a cake that echoed the sensual shapes of her sofas, to be served during Milan Design Week.

Craftica

Craftica Gallery made its debut at Milan Design Week with an exhibition titled ‘Emotions Passion Burgundy. Artigiani Polacchi’. The space, the floor of which was covered in sand, showcased contemporary Polish design, featuring works by makers including Zofia Sobolewska-Ursic, Formsophy (Alicja Prussakowska and Jakub Kijowski) and Alicja Patanowska. The space brought together works that balance traditional techniques with contemporary aesthetics, and was bursting with shades of purple, representing, says the gallery, ‘prestige and artistic maturity’.

Cyryl Zakrzewski

Cyryl Zakrzewski is a Polish artist, sculptor and designer whose work explores the relationship between nature and technology. At ‘RoCollective 2025’, he presented his ‘Organoid’ collection, which features objects that echo living matter with their chaotic forms. The ‘Organoid Cabinet’ is an irregular wooden form that symbolises the natural environment, combined with a simple, functional form made from recycled plastic, representing human culture. Also on display were Zakrzewski’s ‘Nexus’ and ‘Flow’ collections, which also espouse the artist’s organic design language.

Lucas Recchia

Brazilian designer Lucas Recchia brought his ‘Eche’ sofa and armchair and ‘Morfa’ tables to Milan Design Week. The seating pieces are notable for the way that they rest on a bronze base, elevating them off the ground. The backrest and seat are also separated, allowing for juxtapositions in the upholstery. The ‘Morfa No.01’ table, handcrafted over 20 days by master glass artisans, represents Recchia’s first foray into collectible design. ‘Morfa No.02’, meanwhile, is reinterpreted in solid bronze.

Jacopo Gonzato

Italian architect, designer and sound designer Jacopo Gonzato presented an entirely new way to think about sound systems. The ‘Sound Geometry’ collection looks like large-scale sculptures, but the pieces are, in fact, speakers. Vibrations through the structures create the sound, meaning that music literally emanates from the wood. This type of audio diffusion challenges the conventional ‘point source and cone’ approach, instead allowing surfaces to produce sound. ‘I love that the sound is tangible; you can understand that it's a physical phenomenon,’ says Gonzato, who started playing with speakers when he was eight years old. ‘Just as it’s possible to define a space with a structure, you can also define a space with a sound.’

Yong Nam Kim

The solo exhibition ‘Come Across’ featured sculptures and installations that elevate traditional Korean furniture, including cabinets and containers known as ‘Hams’ (dowry closets) and ‘Jang’ (glass versions with wood engravings). Kim's use of glass symbolises emptiness, an important concept in Korean culture; she also incorporates ‘Ottchil’, a South Korean lacquering method. The pieces are studies in materiality and technique, while also representing philosophical Korean concepts and Kim's personal experiences.

rossanaorlandi.com. ‘RoCollectible 2025’ ran 7-13 April 2025

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