Milan Design Week (20-26 April 2026) rumbles on, and one showcase on everyone's lips – enthusiastically recommended in exhibition queues, at cocktail parties and over dinners – is Alcova.
The design platform has this year taken over two of the city's most compelling venues: Villa Pestarini, the modernist residence completed in 1939 by Italian architect Franco Albini, which has remained a private home ever since; and the Baggio military hospital, a historic Italian Army complex built between 1928 and 1931, used heavily during the Second World War. 'All of the locations we have occupied since 2018 are very powerful examples of architecture. They are also places that are usually not accessible, and so they have this incredible patina,' Alcova co-founder Valentina Ciuffi told Wallpaper* during a show preview at Baggio.
The pairing is deliberate and evocative: one a sleek midcentury residence, the other a weathered institutional complex with its own internal logic of streets, courtyards and outbuildings. Across both, Alcova brings together 131 exhibitors, each staged as a thoughtful intervention rather than mere decoration. 'Alcova, since the outset, has always been a platform for emerging talent. It's always been really important to us to allow designers – even those at their first Salone – to be able to show their work. It's something that's quite endangered at Milan Design Week,' adds co-founder Joseph Grima.
Haworth & Cassina by Patricia Urquiola at Villa Pestarini
Slalom x VAI at the Baggio military hospital
Villa Pestarini
Stepping inside this rationalist, blocky structure gives you, in some ways, a sense of what it might be like to live here – the kitchen, bathroom and beyond are all operational. In other ways, Alcova's interventions transform the space: the kitchen is filled with accessories and a striking hand-motif chair from Worn Studios; the bath and shower have become home to concrete forms by Elisa Uberti; and the basement has been turned over to benches made from material offcuts, including pastel-toned marbles, by Atma.
The ground floor is where the rationalist dream is most fully realised: a space of geometric proportions, flooded with light through walls of translucent glass. It is here that the week's standout intervention holds court: 'Albini in Present Tense', a collaboration between Patricia Urquiola and Haworth & Cassina, presenting Albini's furnishings reissued exclusively by the latter, including a previously unpublished 1947 armchair. In the basement, Boccamonte makes its furniture debut with a collection celebrating architect Luisa Castiglioni, herself a protégé of Albini.
Worn Studio at Villa Pestarini
Baggio military hospital
Described as 'a city within a city' by Grima, this sprawling, semi-derelict site is gradually being reclaimed by nature – and that is very much part of its charm. Its streets, courtyards, hangars, kitchens and chapels all feel slightly unruly and faintly haunting, now occupied with a programme of site-specific work.
The Chiesa (church) – accessible for the first time this year – hosts 'Devices for Connection', an immersive installation by Leo Lague and collective Versa, integrating technology, sound, light and material. In Hangar 1, Objects of Common Interest for Dooor presents 'Threshold', a spatial meditation on how minimal gesture can constitute architecture: using Dooor's dividers, designers Eleni Petaloti and Léonidas Trampoukis compose a fully white interior of subtle boundaries. Also in Hangar 1, Supaform's 'Seat in Touch' reinterprets public transit seating as a sofa system, complemented by Mutina's ‘Bloc’ bricks designed by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.
Leo Lague + Versa at Baggio military hospital
The other areas – the Stecca, Canonica, Cucina, Lavanderia, Tempio and Casa delle Suore – host independent designers, emerging studios and institutions including Design Academy Eindhoven, the Architectural Association and UMPRUM. Away from the headline acts, it was these humbler corridors that yielded the week's most unexpected pleasures: Jabex Bartlett's pasta-shaped lamps and coffee table; Stella Arion's billowing blue plastic staging to echo her ceramics; and Sister by Studio Ashby's vivid floral interventions – cheerful and unabashed against the complex's weathered bones.
Marlot Baus at Baggio military hospital
By situating its exhibitions within spaces rich in history, Alcova asks more of both maker and visitor – a formula that continues to work, edition after edition.
Alcova 2026 runs April 20-26. Baggio Military Hospital, via Giovanni Labus 10; Villa Pestarini, via Mogadiscio 2, Milan.
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