Nike’s return to Milan Design Week arrives with an unusual proposition: to centre an exhibition on something you can’t see. Taking over five disused railway tunnels in Dropcity, the brand has created Nike Air_Lab – an exploration of air as a design material.
Each of the tunnels draws on Nike's 50-year experience in designing with air but also considers its wider usage in design and manufacturing. 'Air is this magical ingredient,' Nike Chief Design Officer, Martin Lotti tells Wallpaper* two days before the Lab's grand opening. 'And what I love is that it's invisible – so how do you make the invisible visible?'
From a showcase of inventor Frank Rudy’s original experiments, a filing cabinet full of Air Max grails and everything in between. The latest athlete innovations are joined by nearly 100 never-before-seen, future-forward prototypes. Cutting-edge machinery and a curated selection of reading materials are on offer, with talks, listening sessions and hands-on workshops held daily.
Visitors are taken on a journey through the multiple spaces, shifting in tone and tempo. From a stark white NASA-like workshop featuring heavy machinery through the Air archives and into the Air Library: a chill-out space which turns a gigantic air bubble into furniture, the Lab is a sensory and interactive experience, as opposed to a standard exhibition.
'There's probably one too many exhibitions already,' says Lotti of the format. 'The spirit is definitely more of a lab.'
Crucially, the Air Lab is intended to continue beyond Milan Design Week. 'We will invite the creative community to come and work here and use the machinery,' Lotti explains. 'This is not like a circus that comes in town and then leaves – which I think is often what happens during Design Week,' he notes. 'We handpicked all of the machinery specifically and it will stay at Dropcity to be used by students and professionals in the future. So it's something that has a lasting contribution.'
That emphasis on longevity is matched by a willingness to show process over polish. 'I'm not showing just finished projects, but a view behind the curtain,' Lotti says. An expansive table of protoypes from early shoes to the latest in cooling technology is laid out on a specimen table for visitors to examine.
For Lotti, the project also marks a broader return to Salone. 'Nike is a design company at its core,' he says, positioning the brand within a wider creative context. 'And Milan is like the Oscars for design. It felt crazy to me that we haven't been here for all this time.'
First returning to the city for the Winter Olympics in January, to unveil the Therma-FIT Air Milano Jacket, it felt authentic for Nike to come back 'with a different lens and opening up the aperture to a different audience.'
The future is already beginning to take shape in how Nike is rethinking and expanding its use of air. For decades, it has been contained within the sole of a shoe; now it is moving across the body. The result is a new generation of Nike garments that use air to adapt to extreme conditions: pieces that inflate, deflate and adapt as the body moves.
Where the Therma-FIT allows athletes to regulate warmth without adding or removing layers, using air itself as the insulating medium.
Another – Radical AirFlow – takes the opposite approach, channelling air to cool the body in extreme conditions. 'It’s capturing the air differently,' Lotti explains, 'We've created a long sleeve garment, with holes built like little cyclones. It's like having an air conditioner with you.' This activewear is put to the test in the lab, with athletes running in place in front of a heater while a heat sensor monitors their temperature. The unique technology – a simple idea, based on geometry – has already helped the all-conditions racing department athlete, Calen Olson, achieve first place in the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run. He described the experience of wearing Radical AirFlow as 'stepping into a fridge'.
The timing is not incidental. With the 2028 Summer Olympics on the horizon – expected to be among the hottest on record – these experiments are preparatory. 'Just think about the problems the athletes will face.' In that context, air is harnessed as a tool being reworked in response to climate, performance and the limits of the human body.
Seen this way, NikeAir_Lab is about reframing how innovation is understood. 'It's a peek behind the curtain – exploring an ingredient, showing the process, and showing failures,' Lotti says. 'As an innovation company, you go four steps forward and three step backwards. So the lab is a very honest assessment of what the design process looks like.'
Nike Air_Lab is at Dropcity. Via Sammartini 72 20125, Milano.
