Redesigning Design Weeks: CIVICITY
During Milan Design Week 2025, Nieuwe Instituut and Milan-based cultural organisation cheFare launch CIVICITY: the first edition of multi-year residency programme Redesigning Design Weeks, inviting designers to critically rethink the social and environmental impact of design events on their host cities. During CIVICITY, the first resident designers Pete Fung and Studio-Method explore issues of social sustainability surrounding Milan Design Week.
Design weeks around the world have become key events where designers, companies and visitors can meet and exchange ideas, expertise and ambitions. But with such events increasingly contributing to local pollution, rising living costs, housing crises, social inequality and over-tourism, the current design-week model is unsustainable.
In partnership with the Embassy and Consulate-General of the Netherlands in Italy and Milan-based chefare, the Nieuwe Instituut launched Redesigning Design Weeks, a multi-year residency programme inviting Netherlands-based designers to critically examine the sustainability challenges of design weeks and to rethink existing practices. Using Milan Design Week as a case study, the initiative builds on other Nieuwe Instituut projects, such as New Store and Redesigning the Designer, that aim to challenge existing structures and test alternatives in the real world.
CIVICITY
For CIVICITY, the first in the series of Redesigning Design Weeks residencies, designers Pete Fung and Studio-Method (Riel Bessai and Pedro Daniel Pantaleone), have been invited to immerse themselves in Milan’s urban, social, environmental and cultural ecosystems over the course of two months. Rooted in the Latin civis, meaning citizen, CIVICITY emphasises the connections between people, place, and participation.
In addition to the residencies of Fung and Studio-Method, Rotterdam-based journalist Nuria Ribas Costa will document and reflect on the CIVICITY project as it unfolds. Her observations of the city before, during and after the design week will serve as both an output of the project and an analysis to inform the broader international field. Together with the findings of Collective Works, cheFare and the designers, Ribas Costa’s ‘portraits’ will explore existing sensibilities and narratives about Milan and its design week, as well as presenting future scenarios.
When this first residency period comes to an end in early 2026, Redesigning Design Weeks will launch another cycle of residencies to further build on the earlier findings.