sharing futures through food at milan design week 2026
As Milan Design Week 2026 stretches across the city, CIVICITY by Nieuwe Instituut grounds it in a shared act: writing and eating dreams through pizza. Presented with cheFare and curated by Collective Works, the initiative positions itself within Redesigning Design Weeks, a long-term exploration of how design can operate beyond spectacle and into sustained local engagement.
Designer Pete Fung invites visitors to ‘eat their dreams’ through the Pizzeria of Promises, a mobile oven developed during his residency in Chiaravalle. Together with unaccompanied minors from Fratelli San Francesco, pizzas become carriers of personal ambitions, written, shared, and collectively consumed. What begins as a symbolic act opens a wider reflection on design itself, a discipline equally shaped by projections of a better future that are not always realized.
all images courtesy of Ilco Kemmere
from street repair to shared experimentation
Running in parallel, Studio Method activates the streets with the Arrotino del Design, a mobile cart pulled by a Lime scooter that gathers ‘micro briefs’ from residents. The project focuses on everyday needs, repairs, adjustments, overlooked details. Design shifts scale, becoming immediate, responsive, and embedded in daily life. After the week, the cart continues its trajectory within the Magnete community center, extending its presence beyond the event itself.
Inside Villa Mirabello, Nieuwe Instituut’s exhibition traces these processes while inviting visitors to take part. A prompt asks how an old vacuum cleaner might be turned into a design lamp, framing reuse as both a practical and speculative act. Alongside, new residents Demo Practice and Ned Kaar introduce their first readings of Milan through a desktop documentary, setting the stage for the next cycle.
Pete Fung invites visitors to ‘eat their dreams’ through the Pizzeria of Promises
CIVICITY by nieuwe instituut as a long-term urban model
CIVICITY is part of Redesigning Design Weeks, a multi-year initiative that rethinks the ecological, social, and spatial pressures surrounding Milan Design Week. The project positions the city as an active context where design engages with existing communities and conditions.
At the core of CIVICITY is a yearly residency program that selects two Netherlands-based design practices through an open call. Each studio is embedded in a different Milanese neighborhood, where they develop site-specific projects in collaboration with local residents and organizations. This approach shifts design from object-making toward process, dialogue, and long-term presence.
Through this gesture, Nieuwe Instituut shifts the focus of Milan Design Week from temporary installations to ongoing relationships. The city is approached as an active context shaped by social dynamics, migration, and everyday exchanges. Starting from dreams written on pizza boxes, the project expands into a broader question: what happens when design begins with people, and stays with them after the event ends.
the initiative positions itself within Redesigning Design Weeks
pizzas become carriers of personal ambitions
Studio Method activates the streets with the Arrotino del Design
the project positions the city as an active context where design engages with existing communities
Nieuwe Instituut shifts the focus of Milan Design Week from temporary installations to ongoing relationships
project info:
name: CIVICITY
designers: Pete Fung | @petefung, Studio Method | @studio___method, Demo Practice, Ned Kaar | @nedkaar
location: Villa Mirabello, Milan
organized by: Nieuwe Instituut | @nieuweinstituut × cheFare | @quindi_chefare
curator: Collective Works
part of: Redesigning Design Weeks
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