MEET’s Design Week 2025 is MEET THE NATURE

MEET during Design Week presents three exhibitions, Realia, Across the Alps and Meta Cities. April 7-13, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (3 p.m.-6 p.m. for Across the Alps VR experiences).

MEET’s agenda for Design Week 2025 is entirely focused on Meet the nature, an annual program of exhibitions, talks and events that also enlivens Milan Design Week. Sabrina Ratté’s Realia, the VR/XR Across the Alps group show, and Meta Cities by Streamcolors fit into MEET’s research on the convergence of man, nature, and technology.

Art finds a visionary and deeply innovative space at this cultural crossroads. The scheduled exhibitions are part of a broad and variegated reasoning involving the increasingly sophisticated use of different languages and media. The discourse on the human/nature paradigm expands and finds words, images and experiences to describe a generative evolution of civilization on this planet.

MEET is headquarter of Porta Venezia Design District

MEET is headquarter of the Porta Venezia Design District for the third consecutive year, making it the centerpiece of the intense program of a district that is proving to be increasingly vibrant and alternative. The 2025 edition of the Porta Venezia Design District comes under the banner “No Boundaries Design. To Create, one must first question everything,” a concept inspired by the visionary Eileen Gray, designer, artist and architect who redefined modernism by challenging prejudice and marginalization.

MEET’s new ground floor: colorful and welcoming like a garden

Meet means encounter. Of knowledge, of disciplines and of people. MEET is designed to respond to this foundational part of the project: to be a space of cultural intersection. During Design Week, MEET will inaugurate a brand new ground floor and the new VR Lounge, a colorful and bright environment inspired by Meet the nature created in collaboration with the design partner Kartell.

This is also the space of Meet the Nature – Museum Contamination with Kartell, a project born from the collaboration between Kartell Museo and the MEET Digital Culture Center, which brings sustainable design to the ground floor spaces. For Salone del Mobile 2025, the Masters chairs will be outfitted with cushions from the Alice’s Flowers collection, designed by Tiziano Guardini and Luigi Ciuffreda. Made of recycled polyester from post-consumer bottles, the cushions, like the Masters itself also made of recycled material.

Realia: Sabrina Rattè’s vision is a generative utopia

The focus of the MEET experience during the Design Week will be Sabrina Ratté’s exhibition Realia, which will remain open until June 1, 2025, in collaboration with the Quebec Delegation to Italy and the support of Haiki+ and Circularity. The Canadian artist, exhibiting for the first time in Italy, presents four artworks on the theme of symbiotic future: in the immersive room “Floralia” (2021), in the galleries ‘Inflorescences’ (2023), “Plane of Incidence” (2024) and “Cyberdelia” (2024).

Realia during Design Week will be celebrated by a three-meter totem pole installed in Piazza Oberdan for the occasion, with video teasers of the exhibition and information about the collaboration with the Haiki+ and Circularity brands, which are engaged in recycling rare metals found in e-waste.

Across the Alps: the VR to understand nature (3 to 6 p.m.)

The new space hosts Across the alps, a VR and XR group show in collaboration with HUB Bavaria, the patronage of Goethe Institut aus Mailand and Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany. An exhibition made up of virtual experiences, many of them focused on the narrative representation of the climate crisis through an immersive language capable of creating sensitive and inspiring perspectives. An event to meet projects by artists who have chosen VR as their elective medium. And an opportunity to catch up on VR/XR uses as professional tools especially for the preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage.

The symbiotic city of Meta Cities

The ground floor will also host the work Meta Cities by Streamcolors, a video installation that investigates an alternative vision of the city by aspiring to a symbiosis between nature and the urban environment. In the background of the Oled that houses the video installation is the green wall by Ital Mesh, MEET’s partner for the installation.

Visitors will be able to take advantage of digital information tools developed in collaboration with Converso, including an audio guide and the new AskMeet chatbot developed in collaboration with Converso.