PRADA FRAMES X SALONE DEL MOBILE 2025

In what has become a welcome custom of Salone del Mobile – the world’s largest design fair taking place in Milan this year from April 8th to April 13th – Prada Frames returned for its fourth edition! Following last year’s focus on the home space, this year’s iteration of the three-day symposium, hosted by the Italian fashion house in tandem with research and design practice Formafantasma, centred its lens around forms of mobility. 

Aptly titled In Transit, the conference looked at how global distribution networks and digital revolutions shape our daily lives. Through examining the disruptive impact of online and logistical infrastructures and the juxtaposition between the ease of global transit of goods and the challenges related to human migrations, the symposium offered a critical take on modern hypermobility. 

The subjects were discussed by speakers from the realms of academia, design, art and technology – from AI scholar Kate Crawford doing a talk on digital infrastructures and researcher Marta Foresti looking at tools designed to enforce migration to author Nicola Twilley tracking the way in which refrigeration technology has impacted the global consumption and distribution of food.

Each year, Formafantasma’s co-founders Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi conceptualise a captivating venue for the event that evocatively encapsulates its centre of attention. This time around, the duo invited the guests to Milan’s Central Train Station, hosting the talks in the historical waiting area Padiglione Reale (used back in the day by the Italian royal family and heads of state) and the Arlecchino train from the 1950s designed by Gio Ponti and Giulio Minoletti.

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Words by Martin Onufrowicz