Issey Miyake installation returns

Issey Miyake is turning its Milan store into a paper experiment again, not a runway set and not a product launch. From April 21 to May 5, the brand will stage “The Paper Log: Shell and Core” at Via Bagutta 12 during Milan Design Week 2026. (isseymiyake.com) The project was conceived by Satoshi Kondo of Miyake Design Studio and developed by the Issey Miyake team with Ensamble Studio, the Spanish architecture office founded by Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa. That pairing puts a fashion label and a building-scale design practice on the same object. (isseymiyake.com) The clue is in the title. Dezeen says the installation is built around “shell and core,” and those ideas will be expressed through objects and furniture prototypes rather than clothes on mannequins. (dezeen.com) Paper is the material doing the heavy lifting here. Early event listings describe the show as pushing paper into a more structural role, which suggests the brand is treating it less like wrapping and more like timber, clay, or fabric. (dezeen.com, milanobiz.it) That fits Issey Miyake’s pattern in Milan. In April 2025, the Milan flagship hosted “TYPE-XIII Atelier Oï project,” a collaboration between A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake and Swiss studio Atelier Oï that used cloth and wire to develop lighting prototypes. (isseymiyake.com) The year before that, the company was still turning Milan into a test site. Issey Miyake says the “TYPE-V Nature Architects project,” first shown at Milan Design Week 2023, used heat to transform a single piece of cloth into three-dimensional forms before later moving into global sales. (isseymiyake.com) So this year’s installation sits in a longer chain of experiments where Milan functions like a temporary laboratory. The store becomes the place where Issey Miyake tries out materials, form-making, and product ideas before deciding whether any of them belong in fashion, lighting, or furniture. (isseymiyake.com, isseymiyake.com, isseymiyake.com) Ensamble Studio makes that pattern more interesting because the office is known for architecture, not apparel. When an architect is brought into a project centered on paper, shell, and core, the likely focus shifts toward load, thickness, enclosure, and interior volume rather than surface styling alone. (isseymiyake.com) Milan Design Week itself is the right stage for that kind of crossover. Dezeen’s 2026 guide places the citywide festival from April 20 to April 26, while Issey Miyake’s installation runs beyond the fair calendar until May 5, giving it a longer life than a one-week trade-floor reveal. (dezeen.com, dezeen.com) What to watch for is not a handbag or a chair with a logo on it. It is whether these paper prototypes end up doing what earlier Miyake Milan projects did: start as an installation, then reappear later as a real object, a manufacturing method, or a new way of thinking about cloth and space. (isseymiyake.com, isseymiyake.com)