HOW 967ARCH IS QUIETLY SHAPING THE LANGUAGE OF DESIGN AT MILAN DESIGN WEEK 2026

Images courtesy of 967ARCH

Collaborations with Ritzwell, Saba, Fim, Fantini, and Viganò

More than simply designing exhibition stands or products, Milan-based studio 967ARCH is quietly emerging as one of the studios shaping some of Milan Design Week 2026’s most thoughtful presentations. Founded by Cesare Chichi and Stefano Maestri, the studio has spent the past 25 years working across architecture, interiors, and product design, guided by a narrative-driven approach where simplicity, sobriety, and subtle irony shape the experience of space. This sensibility comes into focus through the studio’s collaborations during Salone del Mobile and Fuorisalone 2026, where furniture, installations, and objects become part of a broader spatial narrative.

Ritzwell

For Japanese furniture brand Ritzwell, 967ARCH conceived Quiet Echoes, an exhibition environment defined by restraint and rhythm. The stand unfolds through understated architectural volumes and carefully positioned internal partitions that guide visitors along a circular journey centered around craftsmanship—an essential part of the brand’s identity. Rather than overwhelming the space, the installation embraces a calm continuity of colors and materials, allowing the furniture to remain the true focal point.

Ritzwell

A softer and more sculptural atmosphere emerges in the studio’s collaboration with Saba. Conceived as an enveloping environment, the stand explores intimacy through curving forms, inward-folding walls, and layered architectural gestures that gently guide movement. Designed as a sinuous composition, the installation introduces new pieces from Saba’s 2026 collection while reflecting the brand’s warm and emotional approach to domestic living. Alongside the stand, 967ARCH also presents new designs for the brand, including the Opera seating, Teatro Magico Console, and Teatro Magico Low Table Outdoor, bringing the studio’s soft, architectural language into both indoor and outdoor living.

Presented by Magran Living

Saba

For Fim, where 967ARCH serves as Art Director, the studio once again transforms the Biblioteca Umanistica dell’Incoronata during Fuorisalone through The Factory of Shade. Conceived as an evocative temporary manufactory, the installation reflects on the paradox of designing something immaterial: shade itself. As the studio describes it, “designing shade means intervening in light, transforming it into absence through a physical device.” Here, functionality and poetry intersect, turning light and shadow into a narrative about craftsmanship, environmental comfort, and contemporary production.

Saba

The collaboration also includes Fronda, a parasol designed for flexibility and outdoor living, alongside Summer Sign, a contemporary reinterpretation of the classic beach umbrella through graphic interventions and unexpected geometries.

Fantini

967ARCH’s approach to reduction and precision is perhaps most distilled in Nostromo, the wall-mounted tap collection designed for Fantini. Conceived around the idea of reducing water delivery to its essential gesture, the project removes visual excess in favor of clarity and precision. Technical complexity is absorbed into an object defined by clean alignment and quiet rigor, balancing technological performance with perceptual simplicity.

Viganò

Meanwhile, the studio’s appointment as the new Art Director of Viganò marks another important chapter in its growing influence. Beyond product and exhibition design, the collaboration signals a broader rethinking of the office furniture company’s identity through materials, communication, and spatial storytelling. Presented at Salone del Mobile 2026, the stand becomes one of the first tangible expressions of this renewed direction, conceived as a sequence of rooms and niches that reflect evolving ways of inhabiting work and relational spaces.

Fim

Taken together, these collaborations reveal the breadth of 967ARCH’s practice—not through grand gestures, but through a consistent sensitivity to narrative, atmosphere, and human experience. At Milan Design Week 2026, the studio reminds us that good design is not only seen, but quietly felt.

Fim