Slovenian presentation at Milan Design Week 2026: House of Creatures
The Centre for Creativity will present the exhibition House of Creatures at Milan Design Week 2026, curated by an international interdisciplinary team: Ryan Barriball, Sera Eravci, Urša Gantar, Tine Tribušon, Gašper Uršič, and Vid Žnidaršič. The project was selected through an open call by the Centre for Creativity as the curatorial proposal for the national presentation of contemporary Slovenian design.
Milan Design Week, taking place from April 20 to 26, 2026, is considered one of the most important international platforms for showcasing contemporary design. Through its presentations at Milan Design Week, the Centre for Creativity aims to increase the visibility of Slovenian creative production and provide designers with new opportunities for international collaboration, presentation, and entry into foreign markets.
In November 2025, an expert jury composed of Anja Delbello (Studio AA), Miloš Kosec (Faculty of Architecture), Janez Mesarič (Studio Mashoni), Nina Mihovec (Wilsonic Design), Tanja Pak (Studio Tanja Pak), and Vladimir Vidmar (Moderna galerija) unanimously selected the curatorial project House of Creatures. According to the jury, the proposal develops a universally readable curatorial concept from the local context of the Slovenian creative scene, presenting contemporary design as a living ecosystem of practices, ideas, and relationships. It is distinguished by a dynamic, modular exhibition design that allows adaptability and transferability across various international venues.
The exhibition House of Creatures will be on view during Milan Design Week at Alcova, a renowned platform for independent design that revitalizes abandoned spaces through innovative approaches and connects contemporary design practices with Milan’s rich heritage. At exceptional locations such as the Baggio military hospital and Villa Pestarini, designed by architect Franco Albini, the exhibition will be presented alongside works by established designers, studios, companies, and institutions shaping the international design scene. Some of these historic spaces will be open to visitors for the first time during the exhibition, offering a rare opportunity to experience architecture, history, and the dialogue between heritage and contemporary design.
The exhibition House of Creatures brings together objects by ten contemporary Slovenian design practices, presenting them not as products but as “creatures.” These beings resist conventional definitions and refuse to fit into established categories of function, discipline, or typology. What matters is not what they are for, but how they exist.
By stretching, bending, and rethinking familiar ideas of form and function, each creature challenges our expectations of use, scale, and identity. They sway, drip, grow, disrupt, and extend beyond their intended boundaries, collectively shaping an understanding of design as a practice of creating relationships between objects, spaces, bodies, and imagination.
The exhibition is conceived as a shared home for these creatures—an intimate environment where they coexist, observe, respond, and adapt to one another, forming a living network of interactions. Within this space, they are not in use, but exist on their own terms.
These creatures emerge from ten design practices: Dan Adlešič, Lara Bohinc, Juicy Marbles, Nejc Prah, Lucija Rosc, Maruša Sagadin, Soft Baroque, Janez Suhadolc, Toasted Furniture, and Sari Valenci. The exhibition spans fashion, product design, food development, and other creative fields, presenting design as a way of thinking, making, and connecting across disciplines.
Visitors do not encounter the exhibition as observers, but as temporary inhabitants of an already inhabited space. Meaning does not arise through instruction, but through encounter—each creature’s identity shaped by how we perceive it, coexist with it, and remember it.
The Centre for Creativity is a national platform supporting the cultural and creative sector, fostering the development, networking, promotion, and internationalisation of contemporary Slovenian design and related creative practices. The project is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Cohesion Policy.
You can find more about the project on the Centre for Creativity’s website.