ALESSANDRO SCANDURRA AT MILAN DESIGN WEEK 2026
Three installations, three aspects of the project: what remains, what moves, what happens.
To mark Milan Design Week 2026, Alessandro Scandurra presents a journey comprising three installations that traverse the city and its conditions: from wounded matter to the reactivation of space, right through to the body as an active element of the project.
Three distinct contexts — the Cortile d’Onore of the University of Milan as part of the exhibition-event INTERNI MATERIAE, the Isola Design District and the Listone Giordano Arena — become the arena for research exploring the role of architecture today: no longer as a form to be applied, but as a practice capable of transforming existing conditions into new possibilities.
MATER
INTERNI MATERIAE
Milano Design Week 2026 | April 20–30
Cortile d’Onore, Università degli Studi di Milano
Via Festa del Perdono 7
Nel cuore del Cortile d’Onore dell’Università degli Studi di Milano, Alessandro Scandurra presenta MATER, un’installazione site-specific che porta al FuoriSalone una materia normalmente esclusa: quella della distruzione.
Lavorare con le macerie significa costruire partendo da ciò che resta. In un tempo segnato da conflitti e crisi, il progetto è chiamato a riattivare il senso, dove il senso è stato interrotto.
In the heart of the Cortile d’Onore at the University of Milan, Alessandro Scandurra presents MATER, a site-specific installation that brings a subject normally excluded from the FuoriSalone to the fore: that of destruction.
Working with rubble means building from what remains. In an era marked by conflict and crisis, the project is called upon to restore meaning where meaning has been severed.
MATER takes shape from direct experience gained during the reconstruction of schools in Ukraine, where material affected by war is not merely waste: it is testimony and memory.
“I experienced war as a child, in Lebanon. Today I have encountered it again whilst working on the reconstruction of schools in Ukraine”, explains Alessandro Scandurra. “MATER stems from the realisation that even what is destroyed can once again become a foundation”.
Created with the support of HOLCIM ITALIA – a leading company in the building materials sector – the installation is situated at the centre of the Cortile d’Onore.
A pile of rubble is arranged in a circular formation, creating a ring with a diameter of approximately 16 metres, which is at once ruin and architecture, boundary and protection. A suspended walkway crosses the opening in the ring, allowing access to the interior space, where entering means passing through the broken material. MATER is activated by people. Those who enter become part of the space. In this passage, the material changes status: from debris to relational infrastructure.
“Every war leaves rubble,” adds Scandurra. “Architecture begins when we decide what to do with what remains”.
CORPO
URBAN COLLECTIVE PROJECT
Isola Design Festival
Milano Design Week 2026 | April 20 – 26
Piazza tra via Francesco Restelli e via Filippo Sassetti
With CORPO, the focus shifts from matter to movement. Set within the urban fabric of the Isola Design District and as part of the Urban Collective Project, the work transforms a section of the city into a performative space, where architecture and behaviour influence one another.
The installation takes the form of a continuous artificial topography, a curved surface that invites bodies to engage with the space and transform it. Not an object to be contemplated, but a threshold that transforms public space into a performance space and a field of experience.
“CORPO is potential architecture. The form arises from movement and awaits the next movement”, states Alessandro Scandurra. “CORPO is not complete in form, but in use. The value of architecture is measured by what it allows to happen”.
The project also introduces a reflection on the material: a continuous surface made from rComposite by nlcomp, a fully recyclable laminate made in Italy derived from the nautical sector and reinterpreted here for urban applications, creating a continuous surface that connects the square’s walking level with a suspended deck approximately two metres above the ground, tracing a curved trajectory with a radius of about two and a half metres. At its base, the form is supported by a structure of wooden panels shaped using CNC machines, a framework that recalls the usually hidden skeleton of ship hulls, and which here becomes part of the project’s architectural language.
BUILD UN-BUILD
Listone Giordano Arena
Milano Design Week 2026 | April 20 – 26
Via Santa Cecilia 6
21 aprile 2026 at 4 pm
Inside the Listone Giordano Arena, Alessandro Scandurra takes part in Build Un-build, the project promoted by Listone Giordano and curated by Seed Festival, which explores building as a cultural, ethical and relational act. Build Un-build explores the generative value of making and unmaking; in this context, building becomes an opportunity to question the role of design in the relationships between the individual, matter and the environment.
The intervention takes place within a constantly evolving environment conceived by the artist Raffaele Salvoldi. Alessandro Scandurra presents a live performance alongside Salvoldi, in which the project takes shape through a kit of 200 modular elements in Fontaines Oak — a noble and sustainable material, the expression of a socially responsible supply chain.
A chance to imagine, configure, question. Within this limited timeframe, the act of design is condensed into an exercise in synthesis and responsibility, in which form becomes the outcome of a process. Architecture is no longer an object, but what happens.