Alcova's Unusual Venues
- Alcova 2026 repurposed a modernist villa and a former military hospital as exhibition venues during Milan Design Week. - Curators used both buildings to stage experimental installations and immersive rooms that foreground architecture. - The venue-first approach highlights Milan's current tendency to pair experimental design with unexpected, site-specific settings. (wallpaper.com)
Alcova turned two hard-to-access Milan buildings into design destinations for Milan Design Week 2026: Villa Pestarini and the Baggio Military Hospital. (alcova.xyz) The event ran from April 20 to 26 and marked Alcova’s eleventh edition, with 131 exhibitors spread across the two sites. Villa Pestarini sits at Via Mogadiscio 2/4; the hospital complex is in Baggio at Via Giovanni Labus. (alcova.xyz) Villa Pestarini is a 1939 residence by Italian architect Franco Albini, and Alcova said the house had never previously been open to the public. The Baggio Military Hospital was built between 1928 and 1931 and was heavily used during the Second World War. (wallpaper.com) Alcova’s founders, Valentina Ciuffi and Joseph Grima, have built the platform around sites that are abandoned, overlooked, or normally inaccessible. For 2026, they returned to Milan after two editions in Varedo, north of the city. (wallpaper.com) The 2026 layout put architecture at the center of the visit. Alcova said it was opening “new, unseen spaces” inside the hospital complex while using Albini’s villa as a second setting with a sharply different scale and mood. (alcova.xyz) That approach fits the wider structure of Milan Design Week, where the fair at Salone del Mobile runs alongside the citywide Fuorisalone program. Milan Design Week’s official guide listed 1,072 events in 2026, with Alcova accounting for 142 of them. (milandesignweek.org) Trade coverage treated Alcova as one of the week’s main draws. Wallpaper wrote that the showcase was “on everyone’s lips,” while Dezeen listed it among the local exhibitions returning across two Milan locations from April 20 to 26. (wallpaper.com) (dezeen.com) The venue strategy also extends Alcova’s pattern from earlier editions, which used places such as villas, factories, slaughterhouses, and glasshouses as exhibition settings. In 2026, the draw was not only what designers installed inside the rooms, but the chance to enter buildings that are usually closed. (alcova.xyz) (myartguides.com) By the end of the week, Alcova had again made the setting part of the exhibition: one rationalist private home, one former military complex, and a design audience moving between them across Milan. (fuorisalone.it)
