Written By: Rhea Lobo

At Milan’s loudest design week, Prada replaces materiality with a contemplative symposium on visuals – what we see, what we believe, and what it really costs.

Courtesy of Prada

At Salone del Mobile, surrounded by all sorts of incredible design work, Prada has decided to go a different route. Doing the unthinkable, Prada Frames forfeits the product drops and “newness” for a program of sit downs questioning imagery. Titled In Sight, the symposium smoothly slips into Milan’s most maximal week and somehow, in refusing to compete for it, Prada steals the spotlight.

Gideon Mendel | Courtesy of Prada

Alice Rawsthorn | Courtesy of Prada

PRADA FRAMES

Now in its fifth edition, Prada’s thought-led experience focuses on image-making and its form as immortality for materiality. Curated by research-based design studio Formafantasma, it trades objects for ideas and spectacle for scrutiny by interrogating the image as a political, energy-guzzling entity. In a culture that worships the visual, Prada questions what we are actually looking at? And more importantly, who (or what) made it?

Prada curated all the best speakers like critics/authors Alice Rawsthorn OBE and Paola Antonelli, media professor Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, and photographer Gideon Mendel amongst the plethora of intellectuals.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist & Alvaro Barrington | Courtesy of Prada

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun | Courtesy of Prada

Barbara Casavecchia, Louise Lemoine, Ila Beka | Courtesy of Prada

THE LOCATION

Inside the grandeur of Santa Maria delle Grazie – arguably no better place to discuss visuals than one housing some of the most extraordinary imagery in the world — and with a backdrop of renaissance woodwork and biblical inlays juxtapose conversations about machine-generated imagery, human doctoring, and how design, culture and society converge in the space. In between the talks around historical frameworks is a realization that every age has its illusions – only now they’re pixelated, algorithmic, and endlessly scrollable.

Courtesy of Prada

Courtesy of Prada

Laura Masotto | Courtesy of Prada

Elena Cantarutti | Courtesy of Prada

THE DOUBLE TAKE

Punctuating Prada’s program is the unsettling truth that images may no longer be trusted as truth, peeling back the gloss, revealing the mystery behind the image economy.

In a week built on visual overload, Prada creates a rare pocket of attention. Passive consumption was hardly welcome here – you listen, you question, you sit with discomfort. It’s design thinking without the dopamine hit, critical thinking resuscitated.

Blending key ideas with music, violins and pianos acting as palette cleansers between talks, opening the conversation to a wider audience. Because even Prada knows – sometimes the best way to process the world is to feel it. At Salone everyone wants to be seen. Prada Frames suggests that seeing in itself might be the problem.

Natalia Grabowska & Marine Brutti | Courtesy of Prada

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