HEAD at the Milano Design Week 2026

No One Sees Them Like We Do

Exhibition from April 20 to 26, 2026, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Opening on April 21, 2026, at 5 p.m.
Alcova Baggio
Military Hospital Complex
Via Giovanni Labus 15, 20147 Milano

NO ONE SEES THEM LIKE WE DO
Notes on Animal Interiors

Presented at Alcova during the Milano Design Week 2026, No One Sees Them Like We Do. Notes on Animal Interiors explores contemporary relationships between humans and so‑called companion animals through six spatial narratives. Conceived by students of MAIA – Master of Arts in Interior Architecture, HEAD – Genève, the exhibition examines the fragile, in‑between position of these domestic presences—neither wild nor human—embedded within homes, legal frameworks, and human‑designed technical systems.
Neither symbols nor metaphors, animals are approached here as active presences capable of displacing human centrality and questioning established hierarchies of cohabitation. Developed through a non‑interventionist approach, the project focuses on everyday gestures of care, situations of coexistence, and often invisible domestic infrastructures.

From April 20 to 26, 2026, the project takes the form of a constellation of micro‑architectures, objects, and infrastructural fragments. Six animals—rat, dog, dove, frog, cat, and other species—give rise to as many spatial narratives, each grounded in a fable understood as a speculative tool for rethinking relationships between humans, animals, and environments.

Presented in Milan, this exhibition affirms the singularity of the MAIA and the way it brings together pedagogy, research and contemporary issues in interior architecture.

Six animals, six spatial narratives

THEY ARE SEVEN DOVES DANCING IN MY HOME - Hugo Maia Schmitt, Letizia Milone
Dancing Doves explores the relationship between humans and doves through sound, rhythm, and shared movement. The project revolves around a musical object placed within the space, activated by song, landings, and touch. Rather than training or controlling, the device creates a situation of co-presence where vibration becomes a shared ground. Through informal choreography and reciprocal listening, the project imagines a domestic interior shaped by the possibility of mutual complicity.
DOGS ARE NOT ONLY CREATURES - Stéphanie Hemidi, Kim Sherin Schönauer, Jérémy Troilo
Wiggly Dogs explores the shared territory between humans and dogs through bodily movement and sensory perception. Conceived from a low, animal-centered point of view, the project transforms the domestic garden into a responsive landscape of objects, vegetation, cavities, and textures. Designed for running, sniffing, crawling, and play, the space fosters attunement between species. Drawing on a logic of becoming-with, the dog is considered not as a passive companion but as a co-actor of the environment. The outdoors becomes a site of encounter where shared exploration produces a situated, relational world.
FROGS IN SEARCH OF WETLANDS - Martino De Grandis, Ailyn Pieyre
Hidden Frog questions contemporary forms of fascination, capture, and display of living beings. In contrast to the attraction for exotic species kept behind glass, the project shifts attention toward local amphibians and their threatened habitats. It proposes discreet, water-based infrastructures—places for cooling, hydration, and refuge—embedded within domestic and agricultural landscapes. Rather than spectacular observation, Hidden Frog advocates for a non-invasive ethic of care, where coexistence is shaped by attention to fragile environments, silent maintenance, and the awareness of absence.
MEUW (Socius novus) - Jaemo Lee, Lisa Schober
Meuw speculates on a world in which companionship is no longer embodied by a living animal, but by an artefact that mimics presence, attachment, and response. Neither pet nor machine, the object proposes an alternative form of relation—one that requires no care, no habitat, and no responsibility toward a living being. Carried, touched, and kept close, it reacts through surface, weight, and affect. The project questions whether intimacy can be simulated without domination, and whether replacing the animal might reveal both a desire for connection and an inability to sustain coexistence with the living.
FEAST FOR RATS - Matilde Arletti, Julie Chavaz, Angélique Kuenzle
Feast for Rats overturns the usual hierarchies of domestic space by inviting the rat to the table. An omnipresent yet systematically rejected species, the rat becomes a legitimate guest, participating in an act of shared conviviality. Composed of bread, seeds, and edible matter, the table shifts from a site of consumption to a space of encounter, intimacy, and negotiation. By placing the rat at the center of a shared ritual, the project carried out by the collective LA DALLE (Julie Chavaz and Angélique Kuenzle) and the student Matilde Arletti questions boundaries of disgust, hospitality, and equality, proposing sharing as a first gesture of interspecies recognition.
SOME ANIMALS HIDE TO DIE - Diana Escalante, Karol Szmigielski.
Churches have long been places of devotion, but also temperate spaces offering shelter from the harshness of weather. Drawing on this dual role, the project imagines a place dedicated to death for animals. Conceived as a public architecture of gathering and mourning, it applies human practices of grief to animals without hierarchy or dramatization. After exploring play, care, sharing, and coexistence, this project addresses a rarely considered moment: stopping. Making space becomes a collective gesture—recognizing animal death as a shared experience, worthy of attention and equality.

Research, teaching, publication

This project is part of an ongoing research developed within the MAIA – Master of Arts in Interior Architecture, HEAD – Geneva, focused on the material and spatial conditions of interspecies cohabitation. It builds on the symposium Animals Inside: A History of Objects and Furniture for Pets in Domestic Interiors (HEAD – Genève, November 17, 2025), which examined the historical role of objects, furniture, and architecture in shaping relationships with companion animals, from Antiquity to the digital age.

Through theoretical contributions and case studies, the symposium framed domestic space as a site of negotiation between enclosure and openness, shared environments, sensory dispositifs, digital mediation, care, and constraint. These perspectives inform a pedagogical approach where design operates as a critical tool rather than a representational one.

The research opens toward a book project bringing together essays, archives, teaching experiments, and speculative narratives, proposing an expanded understanding of interior architecture that acknowledges animal agency and evolving forms of shared habitation.

See you in Milan.

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