What is Contract? Everything you need to know about Salone 2027’s biggest innovation

When the world's biggest design fair announced Salone Contract 2027 earlier in 2026, the annual Milanese event, long the foremost staple in the global design calendar, showed that it does not rest on its laurels. Under the presidency of Maria Porro, Salone del Mobile is launching a new project focused on contract furniture and interiors – a take that is intended not only to shake up the industry and 'create concrete opportunities' for growth and sustainability, but also to place the focus firmly back on quality in the design and architecture world. From this year's Raritas (dedicated to collectible design) to next year's Contract, the fair is keen to address all scales in the design world's broad spectrum. The ambition is there – our ears have pricked up.

Salone Contract 2027: the global fair’s newest project

Salone Contract 2027’s announcement was arguably received with a mixture of excitement (the project promises a wealth of new opportunities for the design and manufacturing industry, and it's a new area for the fair to address) and questions (what does 'contract' mean? And how does it apply to designers of all scales?). Pioneering architecture studio OMA was revealed as leader of the project's masterplanning and design. At this week's Salone del Mobile 2026 – where Wallpaper* editors are on the ground and keeping a live blog – the architects offered a glimpse of what's to come during the dedicated Salone Contract Forum at Pavilion 14's Drafting Futures Arena.

'This is a very important step for the evolution of Salone,' Porro said at the event. 'The world of furniture is changing a lot, and this is a big opportunity for design. We thought about creating a Contract pavilion, but we soon realised that our usual rules do not apply here. The name of OMA instantly came to mind [for this journey].'

We attended the forum, so you won't have to – and put together a guide that explains all. Scroll down for more.

Who is designing Contract?

OMA and its research arm, AMO, are perfectly placed to take on the challenge of designing Salone Contract 2027, given their track record of acclaimed, high-profile projects, which range from the EU's visual identity and Barcode flag to the Prada catwalks. Always challenging the status quo and offering new takes on the way forward, the Dutch architecture studio is co-defining, together with Salone president Maria Porro, what Contract work means for the industry and what its physical space might look like.

Led by the practice's Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten, Salone Contract 2027 promises to break down the complex and often obscure (to the outsider) work and collaborations within contract projects, showcasing how they can provide space for design to grow bigger and better through such a process.

What is Contract?

At the Salone 2026 forum, David Gianotten and Maria Porro brought up several times how misunderstood the idea of 'contract' can be – and how complex its nature is. So, what is Contract? Gianotten explains the notion and practice of creating through contract work as an ecosystem – an entire environment: 'Contract tries to represent how a project is done as a one-stop shop, and its ecosystem, which is not only about producing furniture or interior, but it is really about the total environment. And in the end, it's even about the reuse and the end of the life cycle [of a project]. So it's not about aesthetics.'

Respectively, the space within Salone that will host this section 'is not a fair, or a show', he says. 'It is more like a stock exchange.' It is also about working with different specialists to move away from the product alone (although product design, of course, remains central), to more of a systems-building, something that thinks about broader lifecycles of projects and a space where maximum innovation can flourish.

What contract is not, Gianotten highlights, is 'just hospitality'. Contract design has a different timeline to single product design, and a very global aspect. Architect and MAXXI director Lorenza Baroncelli, who took part in a panel discussion on the theme, explained that contract may be about scaling up, but 'it is not about missing on quality – it is the future of quality'.

Salone Contract 2027’s physical space

'Creating the pavilion [for Salone Contract 2027] is as important as its content,' Porro stressed at the 2026 Contract Forum. She selected her architects carefully and first engaged with OMA seven months ago to co-define what this new area of the fair might look like.

'Contract is a start situation, not an end situation,' Gianotten says. Following that way of thinking, the Contract space is designed to be open, flexible and collaborative, aiming to create the right environment and ecosystem for value and collaboration.

There is a discreet entrance sequence, an entryway which the architects describe as an 'introduction' to the concept of Contract, familiarising the visitors with what they are about to see, before stepping inside the large exhibition hall. A round area at the centre of the structure will act as a 'forum of exchange', a (literal) circle which will be the project's social heart.

From there, case studies radiate, exhibited as little universes, with each display having the end result, the project at its core, and all the companies involved with it around it. The aim is to show how Contract is all about relationships and collaboration, contributions big and small. Movable elements will be used so that formats can adapt and change project by project and year on year as required.

Who can exhibit there?

OMA's Contract section aims to display how a contract brief is about creating an environment – 'not buying single objects and putting them together', Gianotten explains, 'but designing the whole environment at once'. The exhibitors will be fittingly diverse and covering all aspects of a bigger project – from design and architecture, to furniture design, but also larger manufacturing, smaller independent contributions and anything in-between.

'[Here, we are] not so much interested in the product by itself, but they're really interested in the whole system of the project,' he adds. 'It's not about the sales moment, but it is really about this long-term engagement for all the actors present, even the client, the designer, the producer, but also the operators.'

The naval industry is ahead of the game in this section, Gianotten flags. 'Already, 95 per cent of the boats are done under contracts. It is a sector that has already moved completely into that realm.'

Contract throughout history – key examples

A tightly packed lecture by Rem Koolhaas offered valuable context to the idea of contract work and an analysis of OMA's thinking for the project, going through some of the historical examples the team researched in order to develop their response to their brief for Contract. Koolhaas visited case studies of global work where a similar approach was adopted, and they range a lot, in typology, result and geographical location.

In Roman times, buildings were commissioned in a collective way, Gianotten explains. '[The contract approach was already embedded] in this mindset, where people would deliver everything from the local environment to the use of that building and even the after-use.' Examples cited vary from the way ancient Romans worked in commissioning as a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk, to the fascinating design story of the Rockefeller Centre in New York, as presented by Koolhaas.

The latter was run by John Rockefeller himself in a 'very rigid manner' that enabled the project not only to survive and complete, but also allowed a 'density of thinking and collaboration' with the important physical beginning of this contract: [It was to be] accommodated and housed in a single environment and [for the different actors] to be together for five years, day in day out, as a single team'.

The striking Lagos International Trade Fair Complex in Nigeria, designed based on hexagonal floorplans, was another key example of contract work with impressive historical intel and delivery results. Meanwhile, Koolhaas also used an ongoing OMA project in Miami, a private home, to showcase the complex nature of creating architecture and interiors, and how current affairs and global challenges, such as war, climate change and political decisions, affect manufacturing and supply chains – which in turn play a key role in a designer's decision-making.

What's next?

While the full scale of what's to come has not been revealed, there are enough hints to offer a taste of next year's Contract space and the opportunities it might offer to exhibitors and visitors. What sits at the heart of Salone's creatively disruptive approach also resonates with Koolhaas and his team. At the Contract Forum, the architect spoke about taking risks – and seeing risk-taking not as a detractor but a rich and even necessary condition to moving the needle in building and the construction industry, a traditionally slow-moving and arguably risk-averse field.

'I am not comfortable with being comfortable,' Koolhaas says. 'We shouldn’t be avoiding risk; by avoiding risk, we avoid creativity.' Gianotten added: 'Risk-taking is important to innovation. Innovation means taking risks.'

It is the right attitude to instigate change – and the hope is that Salone Contract 2027 will provide the platform for just that.

Check our guide to what to see at Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week 2026 and follow our editors’ live blog for latest news.

Salone del Mobile 2027 will take place from 13-18 April, Fiera Milano, Rho