Alcova has redefined how contemporary design engages with historical and unconventional spaces, transforming abandoned and historical buildings into immersive exhibitions. It has activated diverse locations to showcase emerging talents, experimental projects, and research-driven design. Each edition fosters a global dialogue on sustainability, material innovation, and new production methods, creating a dynamic intersection of past and future.

Alcova Milano 2026 has come to a close. For seven days, from April 20 to 26, Baggio Military Hospital and Villa Pestarini came alive with the presence of more than 130 exhibitors and the thousands of visitors who moved through them.

The vast, layered expanse of Baggio and the measured intimacy of Villa Pestarini offered two very different ways of moving through architecture, yet together they formed a single landscape of exploration, where each corridor, courtyard, garden, staircase, or threshold opened onto new encounters between objects and people.

Throughout the week, Alcova became a temporary condition of attention, an invitation to look differently at what surrounds us, and at the many ways in which contemporary design continues to question how we live, build, produce, and imagine. From the morning light entering Albini’s rationalist interiors to the overgrown silences of the former hospital, from the continuous circulation of visitors between installations, garden pauses, and convivial moments around the bar to the exchanges generated by talks, workshops, and conversations, and finally to the nocturnal energy of VOCLA within the hangars, each layer contributed to the sense of a place in constant activation: an ephemeral city taking shape, and with it, a community gathering around design.

To everyone who made this possible and shared this week with us, thank you.