Running alongside Salone del Mobile, Prada Frames returns for its fifth edition with a program that continues to prioritize ideas over objects. Conceived as an ongoing platform for dialogue, the symposium once again brings together voices across disciplines, positioning design as a lens through which broader cultural questions can be examined.
Curated by Formafantasma, this year’s theme, In Sight, focuses on image-making and its increasingly unstable role in contemporary life. Images are no longer fixed points of reference but fluid constructs, shaped by both human and machine authorship. The symposium leans into this ambiguity, exploring how visual culture operates across political, social, and environmental contexts, and how it continues to reshape perception itself.
The program unfolds through a series of talks and conversations that move across disciplines, examining everything from the historical frameworks that shape how we see to the hidden infrastructures behind digital imagery. What emerges is a layered view of the image as both immaterial and deeply physical, tied to systems of energy, labor, and data that remain largely unseen.
Hosted within Santa Maria delle Grazie, the symposium takes place inside the Sacrestia, a Renaissance space attributed to Bramante and defined by intricate inlaid cabinetry and sixteenth-century imagery. The contrast is intentional. Conversations about contemporary image economies unfold within a setting rooted in early visual storytelling, creating a quiet dialogue between past and present.
Like previous editions, Prada Frames resists easy conclusions. Instead, it builds a space for reflection, where complexity is not simplified but expanded. It’s this approach that continues to set it apart during Milan Design Week. While much of Salone leans toward spectacle and product, Prada offers something slower, more deliberate, and ultimately more enduring.
Registration opens April 13th at this link.