Objets Mous:Soft Goods exhibition by Double Entendre at Montreal Design Week 2026 – Photos by F-O Paquin, unless stated.

Design. Montreal has always nursed a rich and experimental design scene — one that, until recently, flew quietly under the radar. The inaugural Montreal Design Week changed that. “This first edition reveals what our city design truly represents: strong collective energy, a bold new generation, and a very free approach to design,” says Sandra Heintz, General Manager of Index-Design and Montreal Design Week. Conceived by Index Design fair, organised by Archi-Design QC and presented by Tafisa Canada, the event brought together over 70 participating venues and transformed Quebec’s capital into a genuine island of creativity.

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Umano studio at INDEX Design Salon.

At the heart of Montreal Design Week, the Index-Design Salon / Tradeshow took over the Grand Quay, where more than 70 exhibitors presented their work within an immersive scenography by Humà Design + Architecture. Among the standouts: the Flower Chair by Umano studio, blooming in matte black, and a steel furniture collection by Bonus, built entirely from upcycled offcuts of ventilation systems — geometry, colour, and ergonomics in surprisingly tidy alignment.

Bonus debuts at INDEX Design Salon during Montreal Design Week 2026.

The NNS brought a touch of theatre with Drama Table, an impossible dinner set designed to unsettle as much as delight. The chairs defy ergonomics, the cutlery is deliberately awkward, and unexpected objects lurk beneath the bells. Suspense, drama… And design! As the studio puts it: “Agatha Christie meets Home Depot!”

Drama Table by The NNS.

One of the more quietly moving moments of Montreal Design Week unfolded at a former Franciscan convent recently acquired by local non-profit Entremise. Before its full transformation into a social project, Entremise joined forces with curatorial collective Nouveau Milieu, tasking fourteen designers with repurposing red oak pews into furniture and conceptual works. The resulting Matière Sensible exhibition was displayed beneath the convent’s vaulted cloisters — a fitting setting for objects caught between memory and new life.

Matière Sensible exhibition by Noveau Milieu.

The Double Entendre collective took a different angle with Soft Goods, an exploration of malleable materials — fabric, foam, paper, silicone — and what they can become in the right hands. Bringing together Canadian designers, artists, and architects, the show made a convincing case for softness as a serious creative force.

Objets Mous:Soft Goods exhibition by Double Entendre.

Elsewhere at Montreal Design Week, a pop-up bar by culinary studio Menu Extra became the backdrop for one of the edition’s more atmospheric installations. Atelier Zébulon Perron and Lambert & Fils assembled six salvaged mirrored cabinets, fluted glass tubes, and a hexagonal steel framework into a suspended, glowing cabinet that hovered somewhere between a chandelier and a sci-fi artefact. A pulsing light composition and warm amber glow did the rest — the kind of space that pulls you in before you’ve quite decided to enter.

Bar Extra by Menu Extra and Zébulon Perron – Photo by Aidan Matthews.

Closing the circuit on an emotionally charged note, Annie Legault‘s installation A Tribe Called Sagarada filled its space with luminous, totemic textile pieces in which the grotesque and the tender fuel a vivid chromatic journey. “Since early on, I have experienced colours as emotions: they imprint themselves in my visual memory as affective states.” It was, in many ways, the perfect coda for a Montreal Design Week that consistently blurred the line between design and feeling.

A Tribe Called Sagrada exhibition by Annie Legault – Photo by Marjorie Guindon.