Fuorisalone: unusual venues
Wallpaper has flagged six new Fuorisalone venues to watch during Milan Design Week 2026, including a historic private residence, an abandoned swimming pool, and a bonsai museum—suggesting much of this year's discovery will come from unusual settings rather than brand stands. (wallpaper.com).
Fuorisalone’s newest draw in Milan this month is not a single brand pavilion, but a run of first-time venues that open private and overlooked spaces to the public. (wallpaper.com) Wallpaper highlighted six additions for Milan Design Week 2026: Villa Pestarini, Casa Rossa, Palazzo Acerbi, Piscina Romano, Palazzo Olivazzi and the Crespi Bonsai Museum. Fuorisalone’s main program runs across Milan from April 20 to April 26, 2026, alongside the wider design-week calendar. (wallpaper.com) (fuorisalone.it) The shift is toward architecture as part of the exhibition itself. Fuorisalone’s own guides this year point visitors to former factories, historic villas, palaces, city landmarks and new showrooms as destinations in their own right. (fuorisalone.it) Villa Pestarini is the clearest example. The Franco Albini house, completed in 1939 and kept as a private family home, is opening to the public for the first time as one of Alcova’s two 2026 sites. (wallpaper.com) (archiproducts.com) Fuorisalone’s official guide says Alcova will spread more than 120 international exhibitors across Villa Pestarini and the Military Hospital of Baggio. At the villa, exhibitors are being asked to work against Albini’s rationalist architecture rather than neutral fair walls. (fuorisalone.it) Piscina Romano brings a different kind of reuse. The outdoor swimming complex on Via Ampère, inaugurated in 1929 and designed by engineer-architect Luigi Lorenzo Secchi, is hosting 6:AM’s glass exhibition “Over and Over and Over and Over.” (fuorisalone.it) (designwanted.com) Palazzo Acerbi adds a more theatrical stop on the route. Fuorisalone says the baroque building at Corso di Porta Romana 3, known locally for a cannonball embedded in its facade, will host H&M HOME’s collaboration with Kelly Wearstler. (fuorisalone.it) The Crespi Bonsai Museum pushes the map beyond central Milan. The museum in Parabiago opened in 1991 and says it holds one of the largest bonsai collections outside Japan, giving Design Week visitors a stop that is part horticultural archive and part exhibition setting. (wallpaper.com) (crespibonsai.com) That wider geography matches the scale of the event. Lombardy’s tourism board says Fuorisalone 2026 extends across multiple Milan locations from April 20 to April 30, while Fuorisalone’s editorial coverage frames this year’s theme as “Be the Project.” (in-lombardia.it) (fuorisalone.it) For visitors, the practical result is that Milan Design Week 2026 is being organized as much by addresses as by brands. The most talked-about installations may be the ones that get people through doors that usually stay shut. (wallpaper.com) (fuorisalone.it)
