In Halls 13 and 15 of Fiera Milano Rho this week, visitors have been wandering through what looks like a dream of a hotel that doesn’t exist. Aurea, an Architectural Fiction, designed by the Paris studio Maison Numéro 20, stages a sequence of imagined rooms — winter gardens, smoking lounges, lobbies threaded with Art Deco and surrealist references — built, in part, from recycled ocean plastics. It is luxurious, theatrical and self-consciously decadent. It is also, by the designer’s own framing, an argument: that a circular supply chain doesn’t have to look like a compromise.

Whether anyone outside the press preview believes that argument is the question hanging over the entire 64th edition of Salone del Mobile.Milano.

 

A short history of the world’s largest furniture fair

Salone was launched in September 1961 by a group of Italian furniture makers looking for a way to push exports during the country’s post-war boom, and it has scaled into the global benchmark for the sector — a 169,000-square-meter, six-day annual referendum on what the design industry thinks is next. The 2026 edition, running April 21 through 26, has drawn more than 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries; the 2025 edition pulled 302,548 visitors from 151 countries, with roughly two-thirds arriving from outside Italy. Designers, architects, retail buyers, hoteliers and developers come to read the room. What gets specified at Salone tends to end up in living rooms, lobbies and offices for the decade that follows.

That makes the fair’s chosen theme matter. This year it is A Matter of Salone — a deliberate pivot from the 2025 human-centered campaign toward something more elemental. President Maria Porro, a fourth-generation furniture maker, framed the brief in an interview before the fair: the possibility of beginning from a stone, a piece of wood, a recycled plastic and giving it shape and function and beauty as something that already exists. Provenance, in other words, is being pushed to the front of the design process rather than treated as a disclosure on a spec sheet.

 

What the fair is claiming this year

The infrastructure backing the rhetoric is real, if incremental. Salone holds ISO 20121 certification for sustainable event management, and the 2026 program continues a 2023 Manifesto for Circular Design that pushed exhibitors toward modular, reusable booths. The newly debuted Salone Raritas pavilion for collectible design — curated by Annalisa Rosso with exhibition architecture by Formafantasma — was conceived as a circular structure, every element designed to be dismantled and reused in future editions. Formafantasma is also curating the public talk series Drafting Futures, now in its fourth year, focused on supply chains, regulation and the ecological transition.

Down the hall, SaloneSatellite — the under-35 platform celebrating its 27th edition with 700 young designers — has built its 2026 theme around “Skilled Craftsmanship + Innovation.” The framing is pointed: craft as a technical prerequisite for designing things that can actually be repaired and disassembled, not nostalgia. Across the broader exhibitions, FSC-certified wood is being treated less as a marketing badge and more as a baseline expectation, and a growing cohort of brands are showing pieces incorporating bio-waste, ocean-bound plastics and other recovered streams.

 

The ocean angle, surfacing slowly

Salone has not built a dedicated marine pavilion or a flagship ocean campaign — but the thread is there if you pull on it. Aurea is the most visible example, weaving recycled ocean plastics into hospitality interiors that are explicitly pitched at the luxury market. Salone’s own editorial desk has separately spotlighted what it calls design that comes from the sea: companies like Scale, based in the French Basque Country, developing biodegradable, recyclable materials drawn from renewable marine resources, and a growing class of producers treating coastal waste streams as feedstock rather than refuse.

The framing in those Salone-published features is striking. The marine ecosystem, the editors argue, has historically been treated as predatory and disposable — a place humans take from rather than circulate with. Furniture, of all things, is being floated as one of the industries that could reverse that posture, by absorbing what’s already in the water into the objects that fill the rooms we live in. It is, at minimum, a useful provocation. Whether it scales beyond a handful of installations and capsule lines is a different question.

 

The paradox no one at the fair quite addresses

Here is where the story gets harder.

For all the circularity rhetoric on the show floor, the commercial energy of Salone 2026 is concentrated in two places that don’t entirely line up with it. The first is Salone Contract, a new long-term initiative led by OMA — Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten — built around a global hospitality and real estate market Porro has put at €68 billion today, projected past €110 billion within a decade. The second is Salone Raritas itself: a curated marketplace of limited-edition, collectible, often vintage and antique pieces whose entire value proposition is rarity. Both are explicitly pitched as the future of the fair. Both depend on appetites — exotic materials, one-of-a-kind sourcing, hotel-scale specification — that are difficult to square with a fully circular supply chain.

Talk to working designers and the disconnect sharpens. Specifiers report that when two pieces are functionally similar and one is more sustainable, the cheaper option still wins by default — and that for projects with budget, clients are not asking for reclaimed teak or ocean plastic. They are asking for the rare stone, the unusual veneer, the material that registers as expensive precisely because it is hard to get and far from where it will live.

Alessia Cirillo, who works at Christian Dior, sees the same pattern from inside the luxury industry. “Luxury still pushes for the extraordinary,” she said. “The exotics, something that is not reachable.” Sustainability, in her reading, is talked about more now than ever, but the conversation has outpaced the practice. “We’re preaching to the choir, but I don’t think we’re walking the talk.”

Walk the streets around Brera and Tortona during Fuorisalone and the same pattern repeats among the public. People want what looks rich.

Ohara Rodriguez, who lives in Milan and works in tourism, came to Salone shopping for a project in Brazil. She is the kind of buyer the fair’s sustainability messaging is implicitly aimed at: actively looking for quality, actively interested in sustainable options. “I’m seeing that we have some difficulty in the choices of sustainable products,” she said, “because sometimes they cost so much, much more than the non-sustainable ones. And that makes a conscious choice harder, in a moment when we are living in this world of climate change, when we need a more sustainable conscience in every sense.”

She locates the responsibility upstream. “We need laws,” she said — laws that would force the substitution of plastics with recycled materials, coconut fiber, bamboo, cardboard. “But politicians have no interest in banning certain materials that could improve the planet.” Her closing image returns to where the article began: “With small actions, we can improve many situations in the ocean, and in the world in general.”

The economics reinforce it. “In a moment where people are very conscious about spending money,” Cirillo said, “if there are still options that are not that expensive, the average consumer will go to something cheaper rather than something that is sustainable but costs more. So it’s more a niche than the average person.”

This is the contradiction the fair’s communications strategy doesn’t fully resolve. Sustainability is presented as a baseline; rarity, exoticism and bespoke luxury are presented as the aspiration. Aurea tries to collapse the two — luxury as conscious intent rather than ostentation, in the studio’s language — but it remains an installation, not a sales floor.

It is worth noting, though, that the paradox is sharpest at the decorative end of design, where status is signaled through rarity. In functional categories the dynamic looks different. Matteo Zerlia, a design consumer in Milan who also works in the home appliance industry, points out that new EU energy-declaration rules and rising electricity costs have already moved sustainability into the center of routine consumer comparison. “People are looking for it,” he said, “and producers are required to work on it.” His sector is leaning on transitional engineering — different steel grades, reduced material counts, lower energy draws — to clear new regulatory thresholds. The pattern is sectoral: where utility and operating cost are visible to the buyer, sustainability has stopped being optional. Where status is the product, it has not.

 

Where this leaves the industry

Not every voice in the industry reads this as a stalemate. Martin Iona, an architect and designer at STI Milano, frames the work in slower, more procedural terms — material choices, production processes and life-cycle thinking integrated into the design process gradually, without disrupting the formal language that defines a studio’s identity. “Sustainability emerges not as a declared goal, but as a conscious direction, requiring rigor, research, and critical capacity,” he writes. (His full statement appears at the end of this article.)

Cirillo, returning to the question after a few days’ thought, framed the same point in operational terms. “The industry is really trying. They understood that they needed to change, but the road is yet to be paved,” she said. The hard part, in her view, is not intent but the scale of structural change real circularity demands — how products are sourced, produced, and crucially, what happens to them after a season or a collection. “Not destroying the pieces after two collections,” she said, “but creating a circularity that at the moment is very little.”

That framing matters, because it cuts against both the trade-show rhetoric and the cynical street-level read. There are a few honest answers to where this goes from here, and Salone 2026 hints at all of them without committing to one.

One is regulation, on the model already visible in appliances. As EU supply-chain and disclosure rules tighten across furniture, textiles and lighting, provenance documentation stops being optional, and the question of whether a buyer prefers sustainability becomes less relevant than whether a seller can legally avoid disclosing it. A second is redefinition: making circularity itself the status signal, the way reclaimed teak and visible repair have started to function in some segments — heirloom over disposable, traceable over exotic. A third, less comfortable answer is that the high end of the market simply continues to do what it has always done, while volume brands quietly decarbonize the middle and the bottom.

The fair’s bet, this year, seems to be on the second path. A Matter of Salone is at heart a campaign to make matter — its origin, its history, its reuse — feel desirable rather than dutiful. Whether the people writing the checks agree is something the show floor alone cannot answer.

The architect Lorenzo Claudiani framed the underlying stakes more starkly than any installation could:

Solo l’uomo tra tutte le specie può capire la differenza tra simbiosi e parassitismo ma è nella inabilità di scegliere la prima che si nasconde la sua fine.

Only humankind, among all species, can understand the difference between symbiosis and parasitism — but it is in the inability to choose the first that its end is hidden.

Salone, in that sense, is a small theater for a much older question.

 

 

 

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The 64th Salone del Mobile.Milano took place April 21–26, 2026 at Fiera Milano Rho. The 65th edition is scheduled for April 13–18, 2027.

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Article by Giacomo Abrusci, SEVENSEAS Media

 

 

 

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Full statement: Martin Iona, architect and designer, STI Milano

Translated from the Italian. Original text follows.

Sustainability and the culture of design: a conscious path 

In the contemporary design landscape, sustainability represents an increasingly necessary direction, but one still under construction. As an architect and designer at STI Milano, I believe it is essential to address this issue with a concrete and progressive approach, avoiding simplifications and declarative positions.

Our work is evolving toward a greater design awareness, which translates into growing attention to the choice of materials, production processes, and the life cycle of our products. This is not a radical and immediate change, but a path we are building with coherence — introducing more sustainable solutions without compromising the quality, identity, and durability that define our design.

In this sense, sustainability becomes a design criterion that integrates gradually into the process, guiding choices without distorting the formal language. Durability remains a central value: to design furniture is to create elements capable of moving through time, reducing the need for replacement and contributing to a more responsible approach.

In the context of Milan Design Week, this path takes on an even more relevant meaning, inserting itself into a broader dialogue between design, industry, and contemporary culture. Sustainability emerges not as a declared goal, but as a conscious direction, requiring rigor, research, and critical capacity.

It is in this perspective that I interpret the role of the architect today: not only as a designer of forms, but as a responsible figure, capable of guiding a real evolution of the design project toward more attentive, measured, and lasting models.

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Originale italiano

Sostenibilità e cultura del progetto: un percorso consapevole

Nel panorama contemporaneo del design, la sostenibilità rappresenta una direzione sempre più necessaria, ma ancora in fase di costruzione. In qualità di architetto e designer all’interno di STI Milano, ritengo fondamentale affrontare questo tema con un approccio concreto e progressivo, evitando semplificazioni e posizioni dichiarative.

Il nostro lavoro sta evolvendo verso una maggiore consapevolezza progettuale, che si traduce in una crescente attenzione alla scelta dei materiali, ai processi produttivi e al ciclo di vita dei prodotti. Non si tratta di un cambiamento radicale e immediato, ma di un percorso che stiamo costruendo con coerenza, introducendo soluzioni più sostenibili senza compromettere la qualità, l’identità e la durabilità che definiscono il nostro design.

In questo senso, la sostenibilità diventa un criterio progettuale che si integra gradualmente nel processo, orientando le scelte senza snaturare il linguaggio formale. La durabilità rimane un valore centrale: progettare arredi significa realizzare elementi capaci di attraversare il tempo, riducendo la necessità di sostituzione e contribuendo a un approccio più responsabile.

Nel contesto della Milano Design Week, questo percorso assume un significato ancora più rilevante, inserendosi in un dialogo più ampio tra progetto, industria e cultura contemporanea. La sostenibilità emerge così non come un traguardo dichiarato, ma come una direzione consapevole, che richiede rigore, ricerca e capacità critica.

È in questa prospettiva che interpreto oggi il ruolo dell’architetto: non solo come progettista di forme, ma come figura responsabile, capace di guidare un’evoluzione reale del progetto verso modelli più attenti, misurati e duraturi.

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south coast does exactly what it promises. But Tenerife is an island of extraordinary geographical and ecological variety, and the version of it visible from a resort terrace is perhaps the least representative of what the island actually is.

Tenerife is home to Spain’s highest mountain, three distinct rural parks, a UNESCO biosphere reserve of ancient laurel forest, villages perched at elevations above 1,400 metres, volcanic landscapes that look like the surface of Mars, and a western coastline of sheer black cliffs falling 600 metres into the Atlantic. It has colonial cities with 16th-century architecture, cave-dwelling communities, stargazing sites that rival professional observatories, and natural tidal pools carved into lava rock where locals have swum for generations, completely uninterested in tourism. The island has a population of around 930,000 people living real, varied lives, and understanding a little of that life makes a visit significantly richer.

This guide is for travellers who want more of that Tenerife.

Understanding the Island’s Geography

Getting oriented matters here, because the island’s regions are genuinely distinct and travelling between them takes time. The central volcanic massif, dominated by Mount Teide at 3,715 metres, divides the island climatically: the north is wetter, cooler, and dramatically green; the south is dry, sunny, and more arid. The three main rural areas — Anaga in the northeast, Teno in the northwest, and the Teide highlands in the centre — each offer a completely different landscape and character. A rental car is essential for exploring any of them independently, and it is worth noting that many mountain roads are narrow, steep, and genuinely demanding to drive.

Where to Stay: Choosing Your Base

The most interesting places to base yourself are not on the resort strip. Here are four alternatives worth considering.

La Laguna (northeast) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most beautiful colonial towns in the Atlantic islands. It was the original capital of Tenerife and its historic centre is a grid of 15th and 16th-century streets filled with carved wooden balconies, baroque churches, and a genuinely lively student population from the nearby university. Staying here puts you within easy reach of Anaga Rural Park and Santa Cruz, without sacrificing urban infrastructure. Hotel Laguna Nivaria, housed in a 16th-century mansion, is one of the finest small hotels on the island. 1

Garachico (northwest) was the most important port in the Canary Islands until the volcanic eruption of 1706 destroyed much of it and permanently altered the coastline. What remained was rebuilt thoughtfully, and today it is arguably the most architecturally coherent small town in Tenerife. The natural lava pools at El Caletón, formed in the same eruption that destroyed the port, are now a beloved public swimming area. Boutique Hotel San Roque, an 18th-century mansion facing the sea, and Hotel El Patio, a 16th-century farmhouse set in a 60-acre banana plantation, are both exceptional places to stay. 2

Vilaflor (central highlands) at 1,400 metres above sea level is the highest municipality in Spain, and sitting within it feels genuinely remote. Pine forest surrounds the village, the air smells of resin and altitude, and Teide National Park is just a short drive away. For travellers prioritising time in the volcano landscape, basing yourself here rather than driving up from the coast every day changes the experience entirely.

Anaga villages (northeast) — in particular Taganana, the oldest agricultural settlement in Tenerife, set in a steep valley running down to a black-sand beach — offer a different kind of immersion. Accommodation here is small-scale and basic, but the location inside the biosphere reserve, with walking trails directly from the door, is hard to match.

The Three Landscapes You Must Understand

Teide National Park and the Volcanic Interior

Teide is the obvious centrepiece, and it deserves its reputation. The national park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most visited natural sites in the world, but it is large enough that you can find solitude if you walk beyond the car parks. The caldera, known as Las Cañadas, is a 17-kilometre wide depression formed by the collapse of a previous volcanic edifice, and the landscape within it — lava rivers, ash plains, volcanic cones in shades of ochre and rust, and the extraordinary Roques de García rock formation — is unlike anything else in Europe. 3

The summit of Teide itself requires a permit to access the final 200 metres to the crater rim; permits are free but must be reserved well in advance through the national park website. The Telesforo Bravo trail, when an entry permit is obtained, is one of the most extraordinary hikes on the island, ascending through multiple volcanic zones. For those without a summit permit, the trail around Roques de García is an accessible and genuinely beautiful alternative, taking roughly ninety minutes and offering Teide in full view throughout.

After sunset, the altitude and absence of light pollution make Teide one of the finest stargazing locations in the northern hemisphere. The Mirador de Llano de Ucanca and the Portillo area are good spots for amateur stargazing; guided telescope tours depart from various operators in the park. 4

Anaga Rural Park: The Ancient Forest

Anaga is, in a very literal sense, one of the oldest living things in Europe. The laurisilva — the laurel forest — that covers much of this UNESCO biosphere reserve is a relic of the subtropical forests that covered much of southern Europe and North Africa before the Pleistocene ice ages. When those forests vanished from the continent, pockets survived in the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores. Walking through Anaga’s mist-covered ridges and moss-draped trees is not merely walking through an old forest; it is walking through a landscape that has not fundamentally changed in millions of years. 5

The trails here range from gentle ridgeline walks with Atlantic views in both directions to more demanding descents into the deep barrancos (ravines) that separate the Anaga massif’s many ridges. The trail from Punta de Hidalgo up to the cave village of Chinamada — where several families still live in traditional cave houses carved into the hillside, some of them inhabited for centuries — is one of the most culturally and scenically rewarding hikes on the island. The coastal walk from the hamlet of Benijo to the Faro de Anaga lighthouse and back through Chamorga is longer and more demanding but offers one of the most remote feelings achievable in Tenerife. 6

The Cruz del Carmen visitor centre, at the main road through the park, is a useful orientation point and has staff who can advise on trail conditions.

The Teno Massif: Cliffs, Gorges, and Masca

The Teno Rural Park in the island’s northwest corner is geologically the oldest part of Tenerife, and it looks it — angular, layered, deeply eroded by millennia of wind and rain. The main road through the Teno mountains to the village of Masca is one of the most dramatic drives in Spain: a single-lane road that clings to cliffsides above thousand-metre drops, with a viewpoint that looks out across the Atlantic toward La Gomera.

Masca itself is a small village of stone houses that seems to cling to the mountainside by force of will. It has become increasingly popular in recent years, and an early start is strongly recommended to avoid the worst of the crowds. From Masca, the descent into the Barranco de Masca gorge to the black-sand beach at its base is one of the island’s iconic hikes, though it requires an advance permit and careful planning; boat collection from the beach rather than the return ascent is the standard approach. 7

Elsewhere in the Teno, the Chinyero Special Nature Reserve protects the site of the last volcanic eruption on Tenerife, which took place in 1909. The lava fields here are still raw and largely unvegetated, and the circular trail around the Chinyero cone gives a visceral sense of the island’s ongoing geological life. 8

Cultural Touchstones

Outside of nature, several experiences offer genuine insight into Canarian culture. La Laguna’s historic centre merits at least half a day of unhurried walking — the cathedral, the convents, the narrow streets of the Casco Histórico, and the Aguere cultural space. La Orotava, a town in the Orotava Valley on the northern slope of Teide, has some of the finest examples of traditional Canarian architecture anywhere in the islands: carved pine balconies, stone mansions, cobbled streets. The Casa de los Balcones is the most visited building in the town, though the whole historic centre is worth wandering. The valley below, filled with banana and potato terraces and still farmed in traditional strips, is a reminder that Tenerife had a complex agricultural life before tourism arrived.

The Drago Milenario in Icod de los Vinos — a Dracaena draco, or dragon tree, estimated to be between 500 and 1,000 years old — is one of the botanical landmarks of the Atlantic islands. The species is endemic to the Canary Islands and Madeira and was sacred to the indigenous Guanche people; its red sap was known as dragon’s blood and had ceremonial and medicinal uses. The tree in Icod is the largest specimen known. 9

For an encounter with the island’s pre-Hispanic past, the Pyramids of Güímar in the east of the island are a genuinely puzzling site: six stepped pyramidal structures of uncertain origin, oriented to the solstice sun. They were brought to international attention by the explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who believed them to be of pre-Columbian significance. The on-site museum presents multiple interpretive perspectives with appropriate caution.

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Suggested 7-Day Itinerary

This itinerary is designed to move through the island’s distinct regions at a pace that allows genuine engagement with each. A rental car is essential throughout.

Day 1 — Arrive, La Laguna Check in to La Laguna. Spend the afternoon walking the historic centre. Evening in the city’s restaurant and bar scene.

Day 2 — Anaga Rural Park Full day in Anaga. Morning: drive the Anaga mountain road with stops at viewpoints above Taganana and the Cruz del Carmen visitor centre. Afternoon: hike the Punta de Hidalgo to Chinamada trail (roughly 4 hours round trip, moderate difficulty). Return to La Laguna.

Day 3 — Santa Cruz, then drive north to Garachico Morning in Santa Cruz: the Tenerife Auditorium, the Mercado Nuestra Señora de África, and the seafront. Early afternoon: drive to Garachico (roughly 1 hour). Check in. Explore the town and swim at El Caletón tidal pools before sunset.

Day 4 — Teno Massif and Masca Early start. Drive the Teno road to Masca (arrive before 9am). Walk the Barranco de Masca if booked in advance, exiting by boat; otherwise explore the village and hike the Santiago del Teide to Masca ridge trail. Afternoon: Chinyero lava field walk.

Day 5 — Drive south via La Orotava, ascend to Vilaflor Morning in La Orotava: Casa de los Balcones, the old town, the valley viewpoints. Drive through Icod de los Vinos to see the Drago Milenario. Continue south and upward to Vilaflor. Check in to local accommodation. Evening: early night ahead of Teide day.

Day 6 — Teide National Park Full day in the park. Morning: Roques de García circuit (1.5 hours). If summit permit held: Telesforo Bravo ascent. Afternoon: explore the caldera floor. Stay until after dark for stargazing at Mirador de Llano de Ucanca.

Day 7 — Anaga coast or rest day, return Optional: drive to Taganana for a walk down to the beach, or return to La Laguna for a last morning in the city. Depart.

Sources

1. The Hotel Guru: Best Places to Stay in Tenerife, thehotelguru.com; Hotel Laguna Nivaria listing
2. Secret Places: Boutique Hotels Garachico, secretplaces.com; Hotel El Patio and Boutique Hotel San Roque
3. Our Wanders: Best Day Hikes in Tenerife, ourwanders.com, March 2026
4. Tenerife Excursions: Tenerife — stunning nature between Teide, Anaga, and unique landscapes, escursionitenerife.com, October 2025
5. Hiking Fex: Tenerife Hiking — 30 most beautiful hikes, hikingfex.com, September 2025
6. Moon Honey Travel: Hiking Tenerife Mountains, moonhoneytravel.com
7. Charlies Wanderings: The 7 Very Best Hikes in Tenerife, charlieswanderings.com, August 2025
8. Our Wanders: Best Day Hikes in Tenerife — Chinyero section, ourwanders.com
9. Let Y Go: Itinerary of the 6 Little-Known Villages of Tenerife — Icod de los Vinos section, letygoeson.it, July 2025