HEAD – GENÈVE PRESENTS “NO ONE SEES THEM LIKE WE DO. NOTES ON ANIMAL INTERIORS” AT ALCOVA MILANO

Images courtesy of HEAD – Genève

Tracing Subtle Negotiations Between Humans, Animals, and Space

A quiet yet provocative presence emerges at Alcova Milano during Milan Design Week 2026, where HEAD – Genève presents No One Sees Them Like We Do. Notes on Animal Interiors. Based in Geneva, HEAD – Genève is a leading art and design school known for its cross-disciplinary approach and experimental pedagogy—an exhibition that gently shifts how we perceive shared living.

Rather than centering human narratives, the project turns toward animals as active co-inhabitants of domestic space. Developed by students from the MAIA – Master in Interior Architecture, the exhibition unfolds through six spatial narratives, each rooted in the presence of animals that exist within our homes yet often remain at the margins.

Presented by Coulisse | INK

These narratives take shape as micro-architectures, objects, and infrastructural fragments, each centred on a specific animal—from rats and dogs to doves, frogs, and cats. Rather than staging dramatic interventions, the works focus on quiet, everyday conditions, where design emerges through gestures of care, proximity, and coexistence—revealing how domestic environments are continuously adapted and shared.

At once intimate and speculative, the exhibition reads like a fragmented domestic landscape. Animals are not treated as metaphors, but as presences capable of subtly challenging the hierarchies embedded in architecture and daily life, bringing attention to overlooked infrastructures and the fragile in-between state they occupy.

Set within the raw, layered context of Alcova’s Baggio Military Hospital complex, the project feels both grounded and open-ended—anchored in reality, yet quietly speculative. It invites viewers to reconsider domestic rituals and the unseen systems that shape them.

In an era where design increasingly intersects with ecology and ethics, the exhibition proposes a subtle yet radical idea: interiors are not solely human domains, but shared territories shaped by multiple forms of life.