pizzeria of promises invites you to eat your dreams at milan design week 2026

sharing futures through food at milan design week 2026

As Milan Design Week 2026 stretches across the city, CIVICITY by Nieuwe Instituut grounds it in a shared act: writing and eating dreams through pizza. Presented with cheFare and curated by Collective Works, the initiative positions itself within Redesigning Design Weeks, a long-term exploration of how design can operate beyond spectacle and into sustained local engagement.

Designer Pete Fung invites visitors to ‘eat their dreams’ through the Pizzeria of Promises, a mobile oven developed during his residency in Chiaravalle. Together with unaccompanied minors from Fratelli San Francesco, pizzas become carriers of personal ambitions, written, shared, and collectively consumed. What begins as a symbolic act opens a wider reflection on design itself, a discipline equally shaped by projections of a better future that are not always realized.

all images courtesy of Ilco Kemmere, unless stated otherwise

designing through broken promises

Developed through a two-month residency in Chiaravalle, Pete Fung’s Pizzeria of Promises worked closely with unaccompanied minors from Fratelli San Francesco to explore the parallel between migration and design as systems built on promises. ‘Design always promises something better,’ he shares with us, drawing a line between speculative objects and the lived realities of those who arrive in Milan searching for change. In response, Fung constructs a participatory format where visitors ‘literally get to eat your dreams or eat your disappointment,’ ordering pizzas based on broken, fulfilled, or uncertain promises, scaled through a hierarchy of needs and topped with emotional states.

The project transforms the pizzeria into a space where personal narratives, from migration to relationships, are acknowledged, shared, and consumed. For Fung, the process extends beyond the installation itself, emphasizing the act of working alongside the participants and their gradual shift from visitors of the design week to active contributors within it, embedding the project within a longer-term social exchange.

Pete Fung invites visitors to ‘eat their dreams’ through the Pizzeria of Promises

from street repair to shared experimentation

Running in parallel, Studio Method activates the streets with the Arrotino del Design, a mobile cart pulled by a Lime scooter, reinterpreting the figure of the itinerant repairman as a contemporary design practice embedded in everyday life. Based in Adriano, a peripheral neighborhood of Milan, the duo shifts their approach from ‘coming in with a product’ to working through what they define as ‘micro briefs’, small, specific requests gathered directly from residents. ‘What if design week becomes a way to exchange with the place you are in?’ they ask, challenging a model of design that circulates as a detached, transportable object. Instead, their mobile cart moves through the streets to ask a simple question: what could design do for you here? From repairing a broken table at a local elderly center to addressing minor, overlooked needs, the project proposes that ‘thinking smaller’ can become a way to ‘think big,’ reframing design as a situated, collaborative process.

Inside Villa Mirabello, Nieuwe Instituut’s exhibition traces these processes while inviting visitors to take part. A prompt asks how an old vacuum cleaner might be turned into a design lamp, framing reuse as both a practical and speculative act. Alongside, new residents Demo Practice and Ned Kaar introduce their first readings of Milan through a desktop documentary, setting the stage for the next cycle.

Studio Method activates the streets with the Arrotino del Design

CIVICITY by nieuwe instituut as a long-term urban model

CIVICITY is part of Redesigning Design Weeks, a multi-year initiative that rethinks the ecological, social, and spatial pressures surrounding Milan Design Week. The project positions the city as an active context where design engages with existing communities and conditions.

At the core of CIVICITY is a yearly residency program that selects two Netherlands-based design practices through an open call. Each studio is embedded in a different Milanese neighborhood, where they develop site-specific projects in collaboration with local residents and organizations. This approach shifts design from object-making toward process, dialogue, and long-term presence.

Through this gesture, Nieuwe Instituut shifts the focus of Milan Design Week from temporary installations to ongoing relationships. The city is approached as an active context shaped by social dynamics, migration, and everyday exchanges. Starting from dreams written on pizza boxes, the project expands into a broader question: what happens when design begins with people, and stays with them after the event ends.

pizzas become carriers of personal ambitions

ordering pizzas based on broken, fulfilled, or uncertain promises | image ©designboom

the project transforms the pizzeria into a space where personal narratives are acknowledged | image ©designboom

the process extends beyond the installation itself | image ©designboom

the project positions the city as an active context where design engages with existing communities

Nieuwe Instituut shifts the focus of Milan Design Week from temporary installations to ongoing relationships

the initiative positions itself within Redesigning Design Weeks

project info:

name: CIVICITY

designers: Pete Fung | @petefung, Studio Method | @studio___method, Demo Practice, Ned Kaar | @nedkaar

location: Villa Mirabello, Milan

organized by: Nieuwe Instituut | @nieuweinstituut × cheFare | @quindi_chefare

curator: Collective Works

part of: Redesigning Design Weeks

This article is part of designboom’s Dreams in Motion chapter, exploring what happens when we treat our dreams and reveries as an active, radical rehearsal for impending material realities. Explore more related stories here.