MILAN — Miuccia Prada has made the cross-disciplinary approach to fashion a hallmark of her career, surrounding herself with creatives that have triggered her observation of reality through a multitude of perspectives.
In sync with that approach, the 2026 edition of Prada Frames — the symposium exploring the complex relationship between design and the natural environment and society — is focusing on the apparently out-of-design, but fashion-tied and intangible topic of image-making.
Billed by the Prada company as “a defining aspect of the immateriality of contemporary culture, and its preference for representation over facts,” the subject will be explored as a cultural, political and material force which relies “on an infrastructure that encompasses, the extraction of resources, energy consumption, data storage and often invisible forms of labor,” it said.
Titled “In Sight,” the three-day event — again conceived by Milan- and Rotterdam, Netherlands-based design studio Formafantasma and backed by Prada — is to be held April 19 to 21 ahead of the official kickoff of Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week, which run April 21 to 26.
“We’re very happy to see Prada Frames reaching its fifth edition. In a moment when so many of our exchanges happen through screens and digital platforms, creating a space where people can meet in person feels increasingly meaningful. Prada Frames is an opportunity to slow down, listen, discuss and learn together. What matters to us is keeping ideas at the center — using the time we share in the same room to reflect on the present and, hopefully, imagine different ways of thinking about the future,” said Simone Farresin, one half of the Formafantasma duo.
Prada and the design studio earmarked the landmark Santa Maria delle Grazie complex for the event. Lectures will take place inside the Sacrestia room, a Renaissance space attributed to Bramante and featuring inlaid cabinets with early 16th-century biblical scenes by Domenico and Francesco Morone.
In addition to participating in the symposium — which is free of charge and based on preregistration on the company’s website — attendees will be offered guided tours of the location, allowing them to engage with the architectural setting of the event.
The 2026 edition of Prada Frames at Milan Design Week will discuss image-making.
Gregorio Gonella/Courtesy of Prada
“Prada Frames is a space where different forms of knowledge meet. The challenges we face today are complex and interconnected, and they cannot be understood from a single point of view. Bringing together voices from different disciplines — whether science, the humanities, activism or the arts — creates a richer conversation and allows us to look at the present from multiple perspectives. For us, this exchange is essential to better understand the systems shaping our world and how we might navigate them,” Farresin said.
The full roster of speakers has yet to be unveiled.
In addition to the daily panel discussions, the fifth edition of Prada Frames introduces a nighttime session on April 19, which will be flanked by a music performance.
“This year we are introducing live music as a new element within Prada Frames. Not simply as a moment of entertainment, but as another way to engage with the program’s themes. If much of this year’s conversation revolves around image-making, and how images can construct, manipulate, or reveal what we understand as real, focusing on sound offers a different entry point,” said Formafantasma’s other half, Andrea Trimarchi.
“Music creates a form of communication that is less tied to the visual and perhaps more immediate and experiential — another way to reflect on how we perceive, interpret and make sense of the world around us,” he added.
The Prada Frames project kicked off in 2022, based on the luxury brand’s and Miuccia Prada’s desire to offer meaningful content during Milan Design Week. The designer and the company’s link with design and architecture, as well as patronage of the arts, is best exemplified by the Fondazione Prada art space, established in 1993, which has locations in Milan and Venice.
The previous four editions of Prada Frames, held in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 hinged respectively on the interconnections between the forest ecosystems and the wood industry; how design and science can spur change and the notion of waste as an ever-evolving material; on the home as a private space seen through a cultural lens, and on mobility and the infrastructures allowing it, seen as dynamic systems shaping movement of people, goods, data and power.
Founded in 2009, the award-winning Formafantasma bills itself as a research-based design studio investigating the ecological, historical, political and social forces shaping the discipline of design today. It has worked with several companies across industries including, among others, Flos, Cassina, Rubelli, Bitossi, Bulgari, Hermès, Lexus, Samsung and Maison Matisse.
