Salone del Mobile spotlights Apricot Pavilion
- Milan Design Week’s closing weekend in Milan put the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation’s “When Apricots Blossom” at Palazzo Citterio among the week’s most closely watched installations. - The show centers on a deconstructed yurt called the Apricot Pavilion, curated by Kulapat Yantrasast and joined by 12 designers working with Uzbek artisans on textiles, bread rituals and shelter. - The pavilion landed as Salone del Mobile’s 64th edition framed 2026 around “A Matter of Salone,” an official campaign focused on material as design’s starting point. (salonemilano.it)
As Milan Design Week closed on April 26, one of the week’s most talked-about stops was “When Apricots Blossom” at Palazzo Citterio, led by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation. (nova.acdf.uz) (milandesignweek.org) The exhibition was commissioned by ACDF chair Gayane Umerova and curated by architect Kulapat Yantrasast, founder of WHY Architecture. It ran during Milan Design Week 2026 at Palazzo Citterio in Brera, alongside the city’s April 20-26 Fuorisalone program. (nova.acdf.uz) (milandesignweek.org) Its architectural centerpiece is the Apricot Pavilion, a garden structure that reworks the building logic of the yurt traditions of Karakalpakstan rather than copying them literally. WHY Architecture designed the pavilion as a “deconstructed yurt” in the historic garden. (parametric-architecture.com) (designboom.com) Inside, the exhibition is organized around three parts of daily life in the region: textiles, food and shelter. ACDF said the works were meant to show how craft carries knowledge, identity and memory across generations. (nova.acdf.uz) Twelve designers contributed new pieces, including Bethan Laura Wood, Fernando Laposse, Marcin Rusak, Nifemi Marcus-Bello and Raw-Edges. They worked with Uzbek artisans using wood, silk, ceramic, felt and reed. (nova.acdf.uz) (wallpaper.com) The project is rooted in Karakalpakstan and the Aral Sea region, where the sea has lost about 90% of its volume since the 1960s, according to Designboom’s report on the show. The exhibition ties that environmental collapse to present-day craft, bread-making and shelter traditions. (designboom.com) (wallpaper.com) A commissioned film, “Where The Water Ends,” by Manuel Correa and Marina Otero Verzier extends that story through the lives and rituals of Karakalpak communities. ACDF said the film looks at how memory is preserved amid climate collapse. (nova.acdf.uz) The installation landed during the 64th Salone del Mobile.Milano, which ran April 21-26 at Fiera Milano Rho with more than 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries across more than 169,000 square meters. The fair’s official 2026 campaign was called “A Matter of Salone.” (salonemilano.it) That campaign language matters here because the fair itself framed 2026 around material as both a physical and symbolic origin of design. ACDF’s show answered with reed, felt, silk, wood and ceramic, and with a pavilion built around inherited construction knowledge rather than digital spectacle. (salonemilano.it) (nova.acdf.uz) Elsewhere in Brera, Hermès presented new furniture, objects and home textiles at La Pelota from April 22-26, while Veuve Clicquot and Yinka Ilori staged “Chasing the Sun” at Mediateca Santa Teresa from April 21-26. Those presentations added to a week crowded with material-led and immersive installations. (milandesignweek.org) (veuveclicquot.com) By the final day, the Apricot Pavilion had become a concise read on Milan’s 2026 mood: craft presented as infrastructure, memory presented as design, and a national foundation using a temporary pavilion to tell a longer story about the Aral Sea region. (nova.acdf.uz) (wallpaper.com)
