Nuova wants to 'bring time travel to the world' with their debut at Milan Design Week

Californian design studio Nuova has been working behind closed doors for some of the biggest names in luxury and tech. The studio makes its public debut at Milan Design Week 2024, and take visitors on a journey back to 1971

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Nuova Milan Design Week
(Image credit: AREA OF WORK)

Since 2018, the Californian design studio Nuova has been working behind closed doors for some of the biggest names in luxury and tech. With their Milan Design Week 2024 exhibition, founders Rodrigo Caula and Enrico Pietra plan to make their public debut – and take visitors on a journey back to 1971.

‘We want to bring time travel to the world,’ announces Rodrigo Caula, who alongside Enrico Pietra makes up Venice Beach-based design studio Nuova. It’s a bold statement, but according to Caula, the pair claim to have some experience with the phenomenon: a residency at artist Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West in Joshua Tree transported them back to the 1970s. ‘It’s an alignment of every sense in one moment,’ Caula clarifies. ‘If you can curate everything to be period-correct – from the music to the scent to the food – you can travel in time.’

Caula and Pietra avow to recreate that moment with their immersive performance that will induce visitors to time travel back to 1971 — and introduce them to their first furniture collection.

Nuova makes Milan Design Week debut

Nuova Milan Design Week

Enrico Pietra and Rodrigo Caula

(Image credit: AREA OF WORK)

The pair first met at ECAL in Switzerland. Pietra hails from Italy and Caula from Canada, but following a few years working at ECAL, and Tesla and Yeezy respectively, they settled in Venice Beach and founded Nuova. At first, they developed new products and researched novel materials behind the scenes for luxury and technology brands. In 2022, they launched their first public-facing project, Aeir, a fragrance company they describe as ‘the world’s first carbon-negative luxury brand’.

Nuova Milan Design Week

(Image credit: AREA OF WORK)

In fact, the pair will call upon their knowledge of fragrances for the multi-sensory Design Week performance. Guests will enter into a period-correct waiting room, where they will wait to be ushered into the Sala, which recreates a living room in California in the 1970s. Once inside, they will have four minutes to ‘time travel’ within the space, furnished with Nuova’s first furniture collection, including blown glass lamps produced in Murano and a modular sofa upholstered in Torri Lana textiles in Bergamo. Nuova will also bring their powers of dimension-shifting to Capsule Plaza, where it has been tapped by Rimowa to construct a ‘Time Travel Café’ within Spazio Maiocchi.

‘In the future, we’ll want to travel back to 1990 Tokyo,’ ponders Pietra. ‘For us, that would be a dream.’

Nuova @Via Stampa is on show during Milan Design Week 2024, from 13-21 April at Via Stampa 8, Milan

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Laura May Todd

Laura May Todd, Wallpaper's Milan Editor, based in the city, is a Canadian-born journalist covering design, architecture and style. She regularly contributes to a range of international publications, including T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Azure and Sight Unseen, and is about to publish a book on Italian interiors.