Design Week 2025: 10 new places in Milan that weren't open last year

Opened in January 2025 and part of the Sidewalk Kitchens group, Onda Listening Bar is the place to be for music and cocktail enthusiasts. Listening bars are typical places in Japanese culture, but they are now found all over the world and are taking over Milan as well. The bar's minimalist design and selection of cool, contemporary cocktails are complemented by a unique listening experience thanks to a fine selection of high-end audio equipment, including a pair of vintage Altec speakers from 1983.

Arket is a Swedish clothing brand that opened its first flagship store in Milan last year, a stone's throw from the very central Piazza Cordusio. It houses the Arket Café, a small Nordic-style corner perfect for a quick stop, just the way the Milanese like it during design week, which bears the signature of Swedish chef Martin Berg, a pioneer of New Nordic cuisine and one of the first signatories of the New Nordic Manifesto. The menu, mostly vegetarian, includes seasonal desserts and selected organic coffees.

A long-standing trattoria saved from being forgotten by three friends with a passion for cooking, wine, literature and more. In the Navigli area, but out of the tourist hustle and bustle, Trattoria dalla Gloria reopened its doors at the end of 2023, but we still want to include it among the places not to be missed during Design Week 2025 because its popularity has not hinted at waning. A contemporary and accurate wine selection, a very short but seasonally conscious menu, along with friendly service and, let's face it, a fair degree of Instagrammability of the restaurant, are just some of the ingredients that make this trattoria a must-visit stop on your itinerary.

Volume BK is an independent store for visual culture and music research born in November 2024 from the merging of SpazioB**K bookstore and Volume record store, located at 69 Via Carlo Farini in Milan. This nearly 200-square-meter space offers books on illustration, art, graphics, comics and crafts from around the world, alongside a curated collection of indie, jazz, punk, rock and experimental records. Volume BK also hosts meetings and workshops, promoting education in visual culture and music research.

Sunnei, a Milanese brand of fashion and more, founded in 2015 by Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, recently opened its new flagship store in the Argonne area, where the brand's headquarters are located. The project was entrusted to the Milan-based studio 2050+, which created a multifaceted space that, in addition to the collections, also houses a café, and is described by the brand itself as “more than just a store, it is a dynamic hub where fashion, design, art, music and cultural experiences come together.”

AEdicola Lambrate is more than a newsstand, it is a cultural project born in 2024 from the reopening of the historic newsstand on Via Conte Rosso in Milan, which was closed in 2022. Thanks to the initiative of Paolo Iabichino, Alioscia Bisceglia, Martina Pomponio and Michele Lupi, the kiosk has been transformed into a center of aggregation for the neighborhood, which in addition to the classic newsstand activity with the sale of newspapers and magazines, also wants to propose collaborative activities with other independent realities and the organization of cultural events, to encourage people to gather by slowing down the hectic pace of today's world.

A historic Milanese palazzo, built at the end of the 19th century and remodeled in 1922 to a design by Mentasti and Lissoni, integrating Art Nouveau elements and neoclassical style, is the home of Palazzo Molteni, Molteni&C's new flagship store, opening in early 2025. Architect Vincent Van Duysen redesigned the building's 3,000 square meters inspired by a collector's house, creating a path between seven floors that celebrates Molteni&C's history and projects its future. The two upper floors, named “Molteni Galleria,” serve as the brand's Milan headquarters and at the same time are designed to be a location for private and public events, enhanced by an exclusive selection of works by Peter Schuyff.

Just south of Fondazione Prada, on Via Vezza d'Oglio, a new cultural and gastronomic hub has emerged that unites three complementary realities: the New York-based contemporary art gallery Scaramouche, the listening restaurant bar Lubna, led by former Moebius chef Enrico Croatti, and the multifunctional event space Magma. The urban redevelopment project, overseen by Florence-based Studio q-bic, transformed a former warehouse from the early 1900s into a 3,000-square-meter multifunctional space.

In February 2025, the independent space Ordet opened its new headquarters at 4 Via Filippino Lippi, inside a former garage converted into a 250-square-meter exhibition space. The renovation project, overseen by Ballabio & Bava, transformed the building into an open space with nine-meter-high ceilings, maintaining the industrial atmosphere of the previous location. This renovation also led to the opening - a few steps further on, at no. 10 - of the first flagship store of the publishing house Lenz Press, also founded by Edoardo Bonaspetti and Stefano Cernuschi, specializing in contemporary art, photography, architecture and design books.

MATTA, founded in 2022 by Giulio Rampoldi, Pierfrancesco Petracchi and Pietro Rossi, is opening its new location in the Solari neighborhood as of March 27, after vacating its previous space on the second floor of the INA building in Corso Sempione. The new and much larger space hosts the exhibition “Freed from Desire” by Maximilian Arnold, a German artist known for his works that explore the fragmentation and transformation of images, a symbol of the visual saturation of contemporary society.