From product to project: OMA rethinks Salone Contract at Salone del Mobile.Milano 2027

“Furniture alone does not create a project.” This sentence by David Gianotten, Managing Partner of OMA, is perhaps the best summary of the thinking behind the new Salone Contract Masterplan, developed with Rem Koolhaas, which will make its debut at Salone del Mobile.Milano 2027.

The presentation video sets out an idea of contract far broader than the simple supply of furniture. A project comes out of the relationship between architecture, interior design, products, technology, manufacturing and people — and above all out of the ability to make all these components talk to one another.

OMA carries this principle into the physical organisation of the new Salone Contract. The pavilion is not conceived as a sequence of independent stands, but as a system of spaces, routes and meeting places. Gianotten compares it to a city: an environment where finding your way, meeting people and building relationships should happen naturally.

How the pavilion is organised

The Masterplan revolves around a central Forum, covered by a suspended, transformable dome that also works as a projection surface. Around it sit the exhibition platforms, organised into four thematic areas — workspace, hospitality and residential, public spaces and nautical — together with the project plazas, mobile displays that can be repositioned during the event, and arenas for B2B meetings. An entrance corridor introduces the contract world and gives an overview of the layout.

The shift from product to project thus becomes a different way of understanding a design fair: not merely a place to show objects, but a space able to represent the complexity behind the making of a work of architecture.

For anyone working in design the point is a concrete one. A good project does not come from the sum of individual well-drawn elements, but from the quality of the relationships built between space, materials, functions and people. And this is probably the most interesting aspect of OMA’s proposal: an attempt to turn the Salone itself from an exhibition of products into a place of projects.

Two of the Masterplan’s four areas, hospitality and public spaces, are the ones we work in every day: from hospitality and restaurant design to the welcome spaces of wineries.

Salone del Mobile.Milano 2027, the 65th edition, runs from 13 to 18 April 2027 at Fiera Milano Rho. The Salone Contract Masterplan is by Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten (OMA).Source: official Masterplan page — Salone del Mobile.Milano