Conscious Objects exhibition at Isola Design Festival 2025 – ©Luca Santini, courtesy of Isola Design.

Design. The Conscious Objects exhibition at the Isola Design Festival 2025 in Milan featured a range of innovative projects, including a smart keyboard that assists individuals with Parkinson’s disease, an unexpected speaker crafted from resonating oak planks, and a cardboard game promoting empathetic understanding. The showcase seamlessly blended sustainability, functionality, and playfulness. Check out the projects we liked the most.

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©Luca Santini.

“Imagine a chair that works only when sitting together, objects that adapt to the user’s needs, or a table game with playing cards to taste,” explained Elif Resitoglu, Isola Design‘s creative director and curator of the exhibition.

The keyboard for people with Parkinson’s disease

Alessandra Galli developed On Cue, a smart and conscious keyboard for people with Parkinson’s disease. The modular and ergonomic device features a custom keyboard and haptic cuffs that target tremors and slowed movement, which impair fine motor skills. “In today’s digital world, keyboards are essential tools we rely on daily, bridging the physical and digital realms. However, for the 8.5 million people worldwide living with Parkinson’s disease, using a keyboard can become a daily challenge,” explains the designer. “On Cue reduces mistakes and frustration, adapting to changing needs and enhancing independence.”

Therapeutic cardboard game

©Tiberio Sorvillo.

Natalia-Anastazia Bakula created Other Realities, a cardboard game promoting empathetic understanding. Each card focuses on everyday situations, posing questions and inviting players to enter other people’s realities, understand their emotions, and view their behaviour from different perspectives. “Referring to the three different types of empathy, the game uses different educational tools to stimulate and promote empathic awareness.” This critical approach to our society allows the game to be played in an educational context.

‘Sinful’ interactions

©Luca Santini.

“We live in a frantic era where no one takes the time to look within, making it difficult to recognise and accept our inner struggles,” explains Ilaria Critelli. The designer’s Face To Face collection of design objects reinterprets the seven deadly sins not as flaws but as expressions of human complexity and opportunities for growth. Every object is designed to dissolve the vice it represents and stimulate emotional and relational balance, transforming the interaction into an act of reflection and awareness.

Symbiotic furniture

With the A Form of One’s Own project, Israeli designer Lee Shmeltz challenges and transforms the perception of objects and passive elements by proposing symbiotic designs that engage with us as active participants in our spaces. The series comprises a chair with a single back leg, which transforms the act of sitting into an engaging activity, and a standing lamp that cannot stand on its own, but requires being held and directed to the desired spot.

Merging wood and sound, matter and vibration

©Simone Fiorino.

Officine Condor presents Fœssura–Legno di Nota, an unexpected audio speaker crafted from solid oak, a noble material with a high sound output. Each piece transforms into an organic resonance chamber. Hidden actuators animate the material, diffusing stereo sound in a way that feels both intimate and immersive. The result is a soundscape that does not merely project music but reveals its essence, as if the wood itself were speaking.

Playing with edible cards

Courtesy of Isola Design.

How can we make fruits and vegetables more appealing? Food designer Martina Gentile created ORTO, a game with edible fruit and vegetable leather cards that allows adults and children to enjoy a sensory and educational experience. “If we change how we interact with food, we can truly transform our habits.”

Appreciating the diversity of body shapes

©Areej Mahmoud.

Body Blocks by Davina Atallah are designed to capture the essence of diverse body types, encouraging curiosity, creativity, and an appreciation for difference. Their simple, tactile forms feel familiar, yet each piece subtly reflects the human form. “By stacking, flipping, and combining the blocks, new characters emerge, offering an open-ended, playful way to explore the many shapes a body can take.”

All photos of the Conscious Objects exhibition are courtesy of Isola Design.

Isola Design Festival 2025 – ©Luca Santini.