For Milan Design Week 2025, TRAGA presents Glasslands, a collective exhibition that explores glass as an expressive, political, and social medium. The project brings together six designers who are redefining the material’s contemporary use, creating objects that transcend simple containers to become instruments of connection. Within TRAGA’s showroom, the exhibition space is transformed into a large tent, symbolizing nomadism, hospitality, and exchange. Curated by Vito Salamone, the set design invites visitors into an environment that promotes slowness, dialogue, and the rediscovery of the daily ritual of drinking. Glass, the exhibition’s central element, engages with a site-specific botanical installation by Talea Flora, which turns the space into a new microcosm. In this environment, the objects on display challenge our thinking, offering new perspectives.

PARTICIPATING DESIGNERS
Natalia Criado (Italy)
Sara Ricciardi Studio (Italy)
StudioNotte (Italy)
Studio Chacha (Korea)
TRAGA (Italy)
Ylaria Pavone (Italy)

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN DESIGN, SOCIETY, AND RITUALS
Glasslands emerges as an act of resistance—an anti-avant-garde movement that rejects the concepts of autonomy, self-reference, and self-generating systems as forms of expression. Here, objects are not meant to be merely displayed, but to be experienced. Pleasure is not found solely in intellectual concepts, but in their physical interaction. Each piece on display represents a unique approach to glassmaking, experimenting with forms, colors, and modes of engagement. The focus shifts from aesthetics to the social and cultural impact of the object. Glass becomes a tool for connection—a material that holds and transforms the act of drinking into a collective, convivial, and political gesture. In this context, drinking transcends the ordinary to become an act of resistance: against the chaos, the surveillance of relationships, and the progressive erosion of physical experience.

AN ENVIRONMENT BEYOND CURATORIAL HIERARCHIES 
Glasslands rejects the logic of hyper-curation, embracing a more horizontal, communal approach. There is no hierarchy between the objects, nor a predefined path. The space adapts to the visitor, encouraging discovery and spontaneous interaction, while challenging the human need for absolute certainty and control. Here, glass assumes new meanings: the container becomes a symbol of exchange between different realities, and an everyday gesture like drinking evolves into an act of resistance. A MANIFESTO With Glasslands, TRAGA introduces a collective of designers dedicated to glass—a material increasingly neglected in the design world. The goal is to create a fresh vision of glass for the 21st century. The objects on display are not mere items to be admired, but tools that shape how we live and interact with others and the world. Visitors are invited to see them as carriers of meaning—political, resistant to imposed mental frameworks, offering an escape from both our reality and from hyper-curated products driven by overproduction. Glasslands is both a statement and a warning: design is not just what we see.

 
Curatorial Text     Simone Marchetti             
Set Design           Vito Salamone     
Floral Design       Talea Flora