WHITE OUT exhibition at Triennale Milano – All photos are by Andrea and Filippo Tagliabue – FTfoto, © Triennale Milano.
Design. On the occasion of the Milano–Cortina Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, design museum Triennale Milano presents WHITE OUT. THE FUTURE OF WINTER SPORTS. Until March 15, the exhibition explores winter sports through the lens of design intelligence, extreme mountain living conditions, and the future challenges posed by climate change, with clarity and ambition.
From skis and snowboards to safety equipment and medical prosthetics, WHITE OUT brings together 200 objects designed between 1938 and 2026, organised across themed sections. The scope expands to infrastructure and architecture, featuring projects by leading architects and artists shaping the environments of winter sports.
White Out refers to an atmospheric condition of crucial importance to alpine sports practitioners. When snow, fog and sky collapse into a single, indistinct whiteness, orientation disappears. Curators Konstantin Grcic and Marco Sammicheli reframe this phenomenon as a metaphor for our time. In moments of climatic uncertainty, they suggest, design, technology, and sport can together generate new paths forward.
Exhibits span functional prototypes and objects bearing the marks of real use and performance. Highlights include a complete racing outfit worn by Italian ski champion Federica Brignone, a two-man bobsleigh from the German national team, and the custom carbon-fibre sit-ski of Nordic para-athlete Steven Arnold, who competed for the British team at the 2022 Paralympics.
A dedicated section focuses on Dainese, the pioneering Italian company that evolved from motor sports into a global leader in protective gear for skiing and winter disciplines. WHITE OUT also addresses the wider systems that enable winter sports: ski lifts, safety infrastructures, and the architecture that shapes alpine landscapes.
“The exhibition traces the evolution of the sport through the lens of design, showing how advances in technology, ergonomics, and environmental awareness together inform the creative relationship between design and winter sports,” says Konstantin Grcic. “It looks both at the world of professional athletes—where performance and precision are pushed to the limit—and at the world of amateurs.”
“We also explore how winter sports can adapt to changing climates through sustainable materials, regenerative technologies, and new ways of interacting with fragile ecosystems,” continues Grcic.
The final section of WHITE OUT presents projects already in development—such as the Trojena year-round ski resort, currently under construction in north-western Saudi Arabia—alongside speculative scenarios developed with the support of artificial intelligence.
The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce of Milano, Monza Brianza and Lodi and is sponsored by Deloitte and Salone del Mobile. Until March 15, Tickets HERE.
Playful yet rigorous, WHITE OUT invites designers, athletes and audiences to rethink winter’s future, balancing performance, protection and planet, while celebrating ingenuity, collaboration and resilient imagination across cultures and climates.
All photos are by Andrea and Filippo Tagliabue – FTfoto, © Triennale Milano.
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