Nieuwe Instituut Returns to Milan with New Resident Designers for ‘Redesigning Design Weeks – CIVICITY’Nieuwe Instituut Returns to Milan with New Resident Designers for ‘Redesigning Design Weeks – CIVICITY’

• Nieuwe Instituut, the Netherlands’ Rotterdam-based national museum for architecture, design and digital culture, and the Milanese ‘cultural transformation agency’ cheFare, will present the second edition of CIVICITY during the Milan Design Week (21–26 April 2026), in collaboration with the Embassy and Consulate-General of the Netherlands in Italy, and Collective Works as curator.
• CIVICITY is part of Redesigning Design Weeks, a multi-year project addressing the ecological, social and spatial challenges surrounding international design weeks. CIVICITY focuses specifically on Milan.
• Each year, an open call invites two design practices based in the Netherlands to take up a residency in different Milanese neighbourhoods. The aim is to develop a site-specific, community-based design approach.
• During Milan Design Week 2026, last year’s resident designers, Pete Fung and Studio Method will present their work. At the same time, a new cycle will begin with new resident designers Demo- practice and Ned Kaar.
• A presentation about the project will be on view at Villa Mirabello in Milan from 21 to 23 April. On 22 April, a public event will be held with all participants, and on 24 April the presentation will be shown at BASE.

Nieuwe Instituut, the Netherlands’ national museum for architecture, design and digital culture, and Milanese ‘cultural transformation agency’ cheFare will present the second edition of CIVICITY at Milan Design Week (21–26 April 2026), at Villa Mirabello and BASE in Milan. CIVICITY is a collaboration with the Embassy and Consulate-General of the Netherlands in Italy, and with Collective Works acting as curator.

CIVICITY is part of Redesigning Design Weeks, a multi-year project focusing on the ecological, social and spatial challenges surrounding large-scale urban design events.

International design weeks, such as the one in Milan, have grown into major global events, bringing together designers, companies and visitors to exchange ideas, knowledge and ambitions. Countless brand launches, exhibitions and events compete for the city’s limited space. This often results in overtourism, pollution, pressure on the housing market and social inequality. Meanwhile, cultural organisations and social initiatives in neighbourhoods outside the city centre – many of which address these issues – rarely connect with these events.

With this in mind, the Nieuwe Instituut and cheFare launched Redesigning Design Weeks in 2025. The project aims to provide a testing ground for alternative perspectives, asking if the transformative potential of a design week could be used to create designs that are only commercially or aesthetically valuable, but that also have a meaningful, sustainable impact on local communities?

CIVICITY is a subproject of Redesigning Design Weeks which focuses specifically on Milan Design Week and Milan as host city, in collaboration with the Embassy and Consulate-General of the Netherlands in Italy and design studio Collective Works acting as curator. The name derives from the Latin word civis (citizen) and highlights the project’s focus: connections between people, place and participation.

Rather than treating the city as a backdrop for temporary installations, the project approaches Milan as an active context in which designers engage with existing relations, conversations and tensions. Each year, two design practices based in the Netherlands are selected through an open call to develop a site-specific and community-based design project in different Milanese neighbourhoods. They then test this in collaboration with local residents.

During Milan Design Week 2026, last year’s resident designers will present their work. Studio Method (Riel Bessai and Pedro Daniel Pantaleone) supported residents in the Adriano neighbourhood with their Arrotino del Design cart, focusing on the repair and reuse of everyday items. Pete Fung developed the Pizzeria of Promises mobile pizza oven in Chiaravalle with undocumented minors, creating a meeting place for conversations about expectations, disappointments and agency.

At the same time, Milan Design Week 2026 will mark the launch of CIVICITY 2026, a new cycle with new resident designers Demo- practice and Ned Kaar.

• Demo- practice (Alessandra Pandolfi and Phoebe Hotopf) is a Netherlands-based duo that explores social life as a designed system. Through collaboration, active participation and civic engagement, they investigate how behaviour, technology and governance structures shape collective access to public space.
• Ned Kaar is an Irish designer based in the Netherlands. His interdisciplinary practice focuses on questions of value in design, working conditions for freelancers, the role of craft and materials in global economic cities, and gift economies as forms of reciprocity in design and culture.

Over the coming year, Demo- practice and Ned Kaar will each spend a total of two months in residence in Milan, working with local social organisations at two new locations: the socio-cultural centre Barrio’s in the Barona district and the non-profit Fondazione Abitiamo in the Niguarda district. They will present their final outcomes during Milan Design Week 2027.

CIVICITY 2026 will be documented by journalist Hani Salih, who will follow Nuria Ribas Costa, who provided reflections on the project last year. Her findings, together with those of Collective Works, cheFare and the resident designers, are included in the project report and here , among others.

A presentation about CIVICITY will be on display from Tuesday 21 to Thursday 23 April 2026 at Villa Mirabello (Via Villa Mirabello 6), during Milan Design Week. The final results of Studio Method’s and Pete Fung’s projects will be included, including the Arrotino del Design cart and the Pizzeria of Promises. There will also be an introduction to the new residents, Demo- practice and Ned Kaar. On Friday 24 April, the presentation can be seen at the BASE cultural centre (Via Ambrogio Bergognone da Fossano 34).

On Wednesday 22 April, a public event about the project will take place at Villa Mirabello from 15:00 to 17:00. Participating organisations and resident designers will engage in a conversation moderated by Angela Rui, exploring how their work, urban environments and design events themselves can create space for social initiatives.

For more information about the project can be found here.

Images:
Download the press kit here.

Contact:
Robin van Essel, Press Officer +31 (0)6 3803 9218, r.vanessel@nieuweinstituut.nl

Nieuwe Instituut is the Netherlands’ national museum and institute for architecture, design and digital culture, located in Rotterdam’s Museumpark. Through exhibitions, events, research and other national and international initiatives, we show how design ideas contribute positively to urgent societal and ecological challenges. We don’t just want to imagine a better future, we want to test it and put it into practice. Nieuwe Instituut is a hospitable and lively place, where diverse designers, thinkers and the public meet. Multivocality is also the foundation of the Zoöp, our organisational model in which non-human life has a voice. Nieuwe Instituut is also responsible for the management, conservation and accessibility of the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, one of the largest architectural collections in the world, and the Sonneveld House Museum, an icon of Dutch functionalist architecture dating from 1933.

A cultural transformation agency founded in 2012, cheFare’s first project was the cheFare Prize, the first Italian grant for culture-based social innovation practices. During its three-year run (2012-2015), the prize received 1,800 proposals from all over Italy and awarded a total of €350,000 to five winners. Currently, cheFare works to map, connect and support innovative cultural experiences in Italy and abroad, collaborating with public and private stakeholders, policymakers, researchers, cultural institutions and grassroot organisations. The agency facilitates collaborative processes, organising live gatherings of practitioners in the social and cultural fields, and curating the national debate on culture, innovation and policies. The agency’s ongoing activity brings different audiences together to tackle complex issues and develop strategic tools for public administrations and cultural organisations. cheFare also publishes original articles and books on contemporary issues together with major publishing houses. To date, more than 2500 articles have been published. cheFare operates in Italy and Europe.

Collective Works is a collaborative design studio based in The Hague, the Netherlands, founded by designers Karin Mientjes and Peter Zuiderwijk. The studio engages with communities and environments to address socio-spatial issues through collaborative projects. Its work takes various forms, including activist campaigns, spatial support structures, participatory design, and institutional programming. Collective Works is also part of the transdisciplinary design-build network Constructlab, which focuses on innovative and socially engaged projects across Europe.