See the best 3D printing installations at Milan Design Week 2026

Milan Design Week 2026, running April 20–26 alongside the Salone del Mobile fair, features a notable concentration of 3D printing applications across architecture, product design, and material experimentation — spread across venues in Isola, Brera, and the main fairgrounds in Rho.

Caracol

Caracol is among the most prominent Italian AM companies represented at this year’s event, with three installations across two venues. At Stecca3 in the Isola Design District, the Milan-based large-format 3D printing firm is showing two works as part of The State of New Materials exhibition curated by Materially, running April 20–26, with a third installation at Palazzo Litta.

The first Stecca3 work, Lithic Flow Divider, was developed in collaboration with Polymaker and designed by Massimiliano Boz and Giacomo Tomesani. The large-scale architectural panel was printed in PolyCore PETG-1113 Marble on Caracol’s Heron AM robotic platform, producing a stone-like surface that combines 3D printing with the aesthetics of natural materials. Its rhythmic, porous pattern defines space while allowing light to pass through. The geometry originates from a generative process developed in Cinema 4D, in which a surface behaves like a fluid interacting with moving solids—the final form captures a frozen instant of that simulated flow, translated into a full-scale physical object.

The second installation, Progetto Magritte, is the result of a multi-partner research initiative involving Tessilquattro (Gruppo Aquafil), the University of Trento, Indivenire, and ProM Facility (Trentino Sviluppo). The project produced a new high-performance material for large-format additive manufacturing (LFAM) based on ECONYL recycled polyamide 6—sourced from post-consumer waste such as fishing nets and carpets—reinforced with natural clay rather than glass fiber, preserving full end-of-life recyclability. The consortium also developed dedicated simulation software that integrates rheological data to predict material behavior and reduce iterations in print setup. At Design Week, Tessilquattro is presenting NILLA, a furniture application designed by Elide Beltrami using the MAGRITTE composite, produced via large-format additive manufacturing and designed for easy transport and multiple uses in the furnishings sector.

Tillverka x Bambu Lab (via VoxelMatters)

Bambu Lab‘s presence at Milan Design Week 2026 takes shape through a set of 3D printed chairs produced in collaboration with Milan-based design studio Tillverka, supported by VoxelMatters, on show as part of the Aura installation at TreeVilla Park in the Isola district (corner of Via Volturno and Via Confalonieri).

The new X2D 3D printer will also make its global debut and will be visible for the first time since its official launch in early April.

The chairs, designed by Pietro Bonu and Giuseppe Donvito of Tillverka, were printed on Bambu Lab machines and conceived specifically for the space, offering visitors seating within Aura’s immersive air-purification capsule while demonstrating what desktop-scale 3D printing can produce at a functional, exhibition-grade level. The Aura installation itself, part of the Isola Design Festival’s Urban Collective program, centers on the startup’s plant-based air filtration systems and marks the launch of Sphera Mini, its first consumer product.

LAMÁQUINA × Barilla Artisia

Barilla’s Artisia—the first and only commercially available 3D printed pasta in the world—is the centerpiece of Edible Reveries, a full exhibition at Porta Venezia Design District (Via Melzo 34) designed by Yellow Dot Studio. The show places the technological and design process at its core, exploring how algorithms and manual craftsmanship interweave to generate new geometries and structures in food form. Yellow Dot Studio also produced Al Dente, a site-specific furniture collection of oversized 3D-printed pasta-shaped pieces accompanied by sculptural lamps, with a video projection tracing the design and technology behind 3D-printed pasta and the cross-pollination between food design and digital craft—framed as a process “from byte to bite.”

An immersive soundscape runs throughout, while daily tastings complete the experience, presenting recipes built around Spaghetto 3D: a single 6.2-meter filament of pasta interlaced into a complex, sculptural structure. All 3D printing for the installation was handled by LAMÁQUINA, which is also presenting ceramic architectural façade panels with IOUS Studio at SaloneSatellite (Pavilion 7, Booth D17–E18) and a line of stone-waste lamps developed with Santiago Carot and B&Y S.r.l. at Fabbrica Sassetti (Via Sassetti 31) under the No Space for Waste program.

CUPRA: Beyond the Known

Spanish automotive brand CUPRA is serving as Main Partner of Fuorisalone 2026 and using Milan Design Week to stage Beyond the Known, a three-part exhibition spread across Piazza XXV Aprile, CUPRA Garage Milano (Corso Como 1), and the Garibaldi Gallery. In seven years, the brand has launched seven models and passed one million vehicles sold globally, and the Design Week program positions that growth as context for a broader design research agenda. The starting point at CUPRA Garage Milano centers on the CUPRA Raval, the new EV scheduled for launch in summer 2026, presented within a space built around the brand’s design language—performance, materiality, and identity treated as a unified system.

The exhibition’s core proposition unfolds in Piazza XXV Aprile under the Essere Progetto concept, where additive manufacturing and parametric design are applied as investigative tools rather than production methods. Material is treated as the origin of form: algorithmic processes and AI-assisted experimentation drive surface research, generating new aesthetics through Color & Trim work that translates brand values into physical finishes and details. The Garibaldi Gallery hosts the CUPRA Experience, including Own the Wheel — the brand’s first art exhibition, with seven European artists reinterpreting the steering wheel as a symbol of agency in an increasingly automated world—alongside a second-year collaboration with Raffles Milano, in which product and interior design students developed rapid-concept projects from a CUPRA brief within a 72-hour window. A CUPRA Lounge, designed with the Spanish outdoor furniture company Gandia Blasco, completes the venue program.

Karbony × Ross Lovegrove (White Label)

At Superstudio Design, carbon fiber manufacturer Karbony is presenting Infinity, an installation that treats the material as a medium for architecture, light, and shadow. The centerpiece is a collaboration with Welsh industrial designer Ross Lovegrove and technical partner White Label Studio, presenting two works—GABO 2.0 and STEREOMETRIC METHOD—that explore rhythm, energy, and spatial depth using lightweight carbon-fiber structures. A second design contribution comes from Hideo Shimizu, whose INFINITY-BIO is a freestanding bath drawn from Japanese ofuro bathing culture, where suspended Karbony elements and modular screening walls create an environment of filtered light and measured immersion.

Ginger Additive × Polymaker

At Stecca3, Additive Nodes—a collaboration between Ginger Additive, Polymaker, and architectural designer Sina Lüder—is presenting a series of 3D printed structural joints as part of the same Materially exhibition.

Printed in glass-fiber-reinforced PETG supplied by Polymaker on Ginger Additive’s G1 large-scale 3D printer, the nodes function as structural interfaces between standard timber members, enabling demountable construction at the pavilion and temporary installation scale. The material was selected for its dimensional stability and load-transfer performance. Where conventional timber joinery tends to be hidden or reduced to purely technical elements, the project treats the joint as a visible architectural component—exploring geometries that only become possible through additive manufacturing.

Treddy × Toyota Boshoku × Supermateria

Italian 3D printing company Treddy is contributing to Toyota Boshoku’s T-CORE exhibition at Via Forcella 7 in the Tortona Area, running April 20–26. Now in its 12th year at Milan Design Week, Toyota Boshoku is presenting three seating concepts—Comfort, Relax, and Sport—built from the same base materials and silhouettes but differentiated through variations in structure, density, and elasticity. Treddy developed the 3D-printed cushioning and padding components for the seats in collaboration with Supermateria, focusing on structurally adaptive solutions that dynamically respond to varying comfort and performance requirements. The T-CORE concept—where T stands for Technology, Trend, and Touchpoint—follows last year’s S-CORE exhibition and positions additive manufacturing as a tool for next-generation automotive interior design research.

MadeInAdd

MadeInAdd is running Maddie is in the Air, an interactive installation at Fondazione Catella (Via G. de Castillia 28) in Isola, open April 20–26. Visitors can have a 3D selfie printed on-site and explore geometries inspired by natural forms. The studio is also participating in an exhibition at Scuola Cova, open April 21–24, where student projects produced through digital fabrication—including 3D printing and laser cutting—are on display.

Heidelberg Materials × MCA

In the Brera Design District, Heidelberg Materials Italia is co-presenting Città delle Idee at the historic Corriere della Sera courtyard (Solferino 28), an installation designed by Mario Cucinella Architects to mark the newspaper’s 150th anniversary. The structure is composed of roughly 1,000 interlocking modules, a portion of which was 3D printed in concrete using Heidelberg Materials’ i.tech 3D NF cementitious mortar by Vicenza-based robotics firm Erratic. The material is fiber-reinforced, contains more than 15% recycled content, and reaches compressive strength roughly double that of standard concrete. The installation runs through April 26, with evening talks on April 22, 23, and 24.

Nagami x Aurea @ Salone del Mobile

Not many 3D printed products make it to the Salone’s main exhibits. Top design studios use additive manufacturing intensively for prototyping and increasingly for non-visible parts in some of their high-end, unique creations. However, you won’t see many fully 3D printed products. Although it’s not a fully commercial product (yet), Nagami’s bar inside the Aurea pavilion was a rare but welcome (and beautifully elegant) exception.

WASP at DropCity

WASP brought a 3D printing and recycling laboratory to the tunnels of Dropcity during Milan Design Week, showcasing two production systems in operation. The RIGENERA 3D system processed plastic waste into new products on-site, bypassing external repelletization and feeding material directly into a large-format robotic arm for 3D printing. In an adjacent clay lab, the WASP 40100 Production system ran automated, continuous production of customized ceramic pieces — vases, tiles, facade elements and design objects.

Bambu Lab’s Milan Meet Up

Just a couple of days after Milan Design Week ended, Bambu Lab hosted a community meetup, also at Dropcity in Milan’s Greco district on April 28, further strengthening the company’s presence at the event. The evening event brought together designers, professionals and users to meet the Bambu Lab Europe team, running alongside the company’s broader showcase of 3D printing applications.