ABET LAMINATI at Genova Design Week 2026 – Photo by the company.
Design. Genoa is a northern Italian city shaped by the sea — home to one of the country’s major harbours, its narrow alleys, carruggi, grand palazzos, and working waterfront all bearing the imprint of centuries of maritime trade. That same spirit ran through the seventh edition of Genova Design Week, which unfolded across cloisters, piazzas, and the harbour with over a hundred events and exhibitions. This year’s theme, Equilibrium, drew together sustainability, marine culture, and humane innovation into an intimate portrait of a city discovering itself through design. The design week is organised by DiDe, the association of the city’s design district.
Containers’ exhibition – Courtesy of DiDe.
Surface material company Abet Laminati landed at the heart of Genova Design Week with an installation by Caarpa studio that reimagined Piazza San Lorenzo as an abstract coastal landscape — a cherished gathering place in a city with little green public space. A 10-by-15-metre platform of 48 raised panels combined colours, textures, and patterns from the company’s catalogue into a kind of contemporary marquetry — an imagined seascape evoking the rocky shores where Genoese locals spread their towels, sunbathe, and claim their patch of the Mediterranean.
ABET LAMINATI at Genova Design Week 2026 – Photo by the company.
Where Caarpa conjured the sea’s surface, a quieter installation in the cloister of Santa Maria di Castello went deeper. Four ominous black columns, developed by Cristian Li Voi and Simone Perini, visualised alarming data on marine plastic pollution — from species extinction to the vast garbage patches now forming in the Mediterranean. Each sculpture was 3D-printed from marine plastic waste transformed into a new composite material by Genoa University’s Faculty of Chemistry; the beauty of the setting only sharpened the urgency.
Metamorfosi by Cristian Li Voi and Simone Perini – Courtesy of DiDe.
That tension between form and function carried into Porto Vecchio, the Renzo Piano-masterplanned harbour, where Genova Design Week curator Simona Finessi placed ten shipping containers housing interior design installations. Among them, Llabb Architects presented a project made entirely of timber — renewable, lightweight, and modular — resulting in an essential yet highly functional compact dwelling that incorporated kitchen, bathroom, storage, and a cosy sleeping zone at the far end of the container.
Wooden Living – Ceci n’est pas une habitation, interior design by Llab Architects – Photo by Anna Positano.
Not far away, Beatrice Bandiera Marlia was doing something similar with retired sails. Her collection Forme di Vento (Shapes of Wind) transforms decommissioned sailcloth into seating, side tables, and lighting, retaining visible seams, eyelets, and signs of use. The material’s lightness, flexibility, and light-filtering qualities carry through into each piece — objects that hold, unmistakably, the memory of wind.
Aura table lamp by Beatrice Bandiera Marlia – Photo by Filippo Taviani.
Federico Fontanella‘s contribution to Genova Design Week operated along the same logic of transformation, though with rougher materials. Working with broken fragments, construction-site offcuts, and waste bound for landfill, he reassembles discards into something else entirely. At the festival, he presented a vase made from layered offcuts of corrugated electrical conduit — modular, precise, and quietly playful. “I create furniture and objects whose meaning emerges only when viewed from a slightly shifted perspective.”
Upcycled vase by Federico Fontanella – Courtesy of DiDe.
