Exhibitions
When bread and oil explain the design
Barcelona brings to Milan Design Week 2026 an immersive installation that transforms raw materials into a collective creative story.
At the next edition of Milan Design Week 2026, Barcelona will not only participate: it will tell a story. From April 20 to 26, the Sala Scalabrini of the Chiesa del Carmine will host Inspired in Barcelona: Materia prima , an installation that turns two essential elements of Mediterranean culture —bread and olive oil— into a powerful metaphor for the creative process.
Far from presenting design as a finished object, the proposal aims to show it as a living organism: a process in constant transformation, made of testing, balance, intuition and research. Curated and designed by the Queralt Suau studio, with the complicity of photographer Txema Salvans and designer Andreu Carulla, the installation is built as a sensory experience that connects matter, culture and imagination.
The exhibition unfolds in three distinct moments. The first places the visitor in a landscape dominated by the earth and bread, where artisanal processes become language and atmosphere, amplified by a sound dimension that intensifies perception. Next, a large choral image —fruit of Salvans's gaze— brings together more than twenty figures from the Catalan creative ecosystem, evoking the tension and search for balance that define any act of creation.
The last scene invites direct participation. Conceived by Carulla, it transforms olive oil into an expressive material with which visitors can experiment, generating visual games that recall the northern lights in motion. The experience culminates with a gesture as simple as it is essential: tasting bread with oil, reinterpreted for the occasion, as a sensory synthesis of the journey.
Beyond the immersive experience, Materia prima presents itself as a collective portrait of Barcelona's creative fabric: diverse, transversal and constantly evolving. A scene capable of dialogue between disciplines, exploring new languages and projecting internationally its own way of understanding design. In this sense, the installation claims the creative industries as a strategic engine for the city, both in cultural and economic terms.
The project is promoted by the Barcelona Creativity & Design Foundation, with the support of the Barcelona City Council —through the Disseny Hub Barcelona— and the Generalitat de Catalunya through ACCIÓ - Catalonia Trade & Investment. As part of the strategy for the international projection of Catalan creativity, the initiative also has the collaboration of several brands that connect tradition, innovation and industry.
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