For those who strayed beyond the expected routes of Milan Design Week, STRATA offered a different kind of encounter. Installed in a former 1940s warehouse tucked in the orbit of Fondazione Prada, the show brought together three Belgian design studios—Tim Vranken, Middernacht & Alexander, and Linde Freya Tangelder—in a joint composition that resisted spectacle and leaned into material rigor.
STRATA was less a group show and more a study in parallel thinking. The title—taken from the geological term for layers—was precise. This was a space of accumulations: wood grain against concrete, metal forms casting irregular shadows, objects calibrated more to tension than harmony.
Vranken’s long timber table held the room with quiet force—no flourish, just density and proportion. Nearby, Tangelder’s three chairs, sculpted in cool-toned metal, felt part architectural, part gesture. Middernacht & Alexander’s room divider acted like a spatial hinge—thin, deliberate, almost graphic. None of these works shouted. But neither did they dissolve into each other. Each contribution held its own weight while staying alert to the room.
The setting mattered. The industrial shell wasn’t romanticized or disguised. Its worn floor, high windows, and incidental acoustics became collaborators rather than context. STRATA didn’t overwrite the space—it engaged it with clarity.
What made the exhibition compelling was its refusal to flatten difference. The designers didn’t merge styles or chase a shared aesthetic. Instead, they worked alongside each other—each practice distinct, yet responsive. What held it together was a shared commitment to material, to form, to restraint.
STRATA asked for time. Not in a nostalgic way, but in the way a well-constructed object holds your attention. This was design with a long view—measured, local in detail, and uninterested in trend cycles.
