Exhibitions
Some buildings gaze at the water from above, others allow it inside; still others descend beneath it, and there are even those that float on it all through the summer. Ten buildings, from 1935 to the present, tell the story of the many ways design engages with an element that is never still
Road to Salone 2027: the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection makes its debut in Jakarta
SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection 1998-2024 Exhibition Exhibition Arts Pavilion, West Kowloon Hong Kong, 2024 ©Davide Colombino Salone del Mobile.Milano
Indonesia will be the first stop on the Salone global tour: from 18th September to 18th October 2026, at Indonesia Design Week, the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection will showcase 27 years of talent, enterprise and the future of design
Not just Milan, not just products, not just April. The Salone del Mobile.Milano is kicking off its new international tour in Indonesia - a rapidly evolving market and an increasingly important hub for architecture, interiors, contract design and property - bringing one of the most vibrant legacies of its recent history to South-East Asia: the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection, a tangible demonstration of just how the event has become a platform capable of generating relationships, content, knowledge and opportunities for the entire design ecosystem. In Jakarta, as part of Indonesia Design Week, the Townhall at Indonesia Design District (IDD) PIK2 will host the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection Exhibition 1998–2026 from 18th September to 18th October - a selection of products that transforms the SaloneSatellite archive into a living atlas of connections.
Following on from Hong Kong in 2024 and the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, Jakarta marks the Permanent Collection’s third international tour and heralds a new chapter in the Salone del Mobile.Milano’s global journey. The choice of location was determined not only by the exhibition itself - bringing SaloneSatellite, an integral part of the event’s internationalisation strategy, means kicking off the international tour in the very place where the future of design and the sector is most clearly discernible: in the dialogue between talent, business and culture.
Founded and curated by Marva Griffin Wilshire, SaloneSatellite, the Salone del Mobile.Milano event devoted to designers under 35, has been one of the most finely-tuned observatories for budding talent since 1998. Its Permanent Collection now holds 415 objects. Some 55 of these will be exhibited in Jakarta – not a retrospective, but a galaxy of stories in which prototypes, products, companies, museums, awards, materials and manufacturing cultures will narrate the most delicate stage of the design process, the one in which an idea finds the right context to become a reality.
SaloneSatellite was created to give young designers a place where they can be seen, heard and connect with the world of manufacturing. The Permanent Collection tells the story of this journey: prototypes that have become products, insights that have led to careers, encounters that have become design stories. Taking it to Jakarta, as the first stop on the Salone del Mobile.Milano’s new international tour, means continuing to forge connections and demonstrating that talent, when it finds the right context, can travel far
Furthermore, Marva Griffin Wilshire will also be taking part in the Jakarta leg of the event as an Ambassador for Italian Design Day, strengthening the dialogue between SaloneSatellite, Italian cultural diplomacy and the Indonesian design scene.
Promoted by IDD and organised by Amantara, the hospitality and lifestyle division of the Agung Sedayu Group, Indonesia Design Week is held in the Indonesia Design District PIK2, a new hub dedicated to design, architecture and lifestyle in the northern metropolitan area of Jakarta. Within this context, SaloneSatellite will play a strategic role: to foster dialogue with designers, businesses, architects, developers, cultural professionals and creative communities in a region where design is increasingly becoming a driving force for urban, economic and cultural development. The exhibition of the Permanent Collection is also being supported by the Italian Cultural Institute in Jakarta, testament to the role of Italian cultural diplomacy in forging new links between the Italian design sector and South-East Asia.
The exhibition design, by the architects Ricardo Bello Dias and Hariadna Pinate, will recreate the SaloneSatellite atmosphere and exhibition layout in Jakarta, offering visitors the same sense of discovery that characterises the event during the Salone del Mobile.Milano. Thus the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection Exhibition 1998–2026 will illustrate all the facets of the Permanent Collection. It will feature icons of contemporary design – objects that started life at SaloneSatellite that have since found their way into business catalogues and the international consciousness, from Sebastian Wrong’s Spun lamp for Flos to the Chab tray-table by Nendo/Oki Sato for DePadova. It also showcases those small yet significant objects, capable of concentrating enduring design power on a miniature scale. There are projects that narrate pivotal encounters between young designers and companies – those that have made their way onto the collecting circuit, and those acquired or recognised by international museums. The selection will also include projects linked to the SaloneSatellite Award, which marked its fifteenth edition in 2026: from the Colibrì loudspeaker by the Venezuelan designer Juan Cortizo for the Quibor collection, which received a Special Mention in 2025, to the Seasons collection of silicone plates by Nao Tamura, which won a prize at the first edition of the Award in 2010 and was immediately put into production by Covo. Rounding off the exhibition are a number of products that have netted the ADI Compasso d’Oro, Italy’s most prestigious design award.
The exhibition will also trace the evolution of the profession of the designer, with designers increasingly called upon to act as authors, craftspeople, researchers and entrepreneurs: figures capable of navigating materials, local identities, independent production and new forms of enterprise. In this narrative, Jakarta is not merely the venue hosting the exhibition, but an integral part of its meaning. The Plank Chair by Studio Hendro Hadinata, developed in collaboration with the Indonesian brand EVERY Collections, will symbolically return ‘home’, whilst other projects linked to the Asian region foster a dialogue between traditional techniques, manufacturing cultures and contemporary design languages.
The more poetic and experimental dimension – which has always been part of the SaloneSatellite identity – will be evoked by objects such as Aether by the Aatismo studio for Lumina, in which material, light and perception contrive to build an almost suspended presence. Rounding off the experience, projects linked to the SaloneSatellite Award and the ADI Compasso d’Oro, demonstrate that the event continues to be a springboard, as well as a space of recognition and consolidation for new design careers.
Taken as a whole, the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection Exhibition 1998–2026 will not merely celebrate a history. It will set it on a new course. Each object on display will recount a decisive moment: the encounter between a young designer and a company, between a vision and a material, between a local culture and a global market. From Jakarta, the Salone del Mobile.Milano will thus be embarking on a new international trajectory, reaffirming its role as a platform capable of forging relationships, opening up new territories and accompanying design to places where the future is already taking shape.
