Alcova, the recurring Milan Design Week group exhibition, is defined in part by its off-the-beaten-path settings, which have included a defunct cashmere factory, an abandoned military hospital and a former panettone production facility. Alcova’s founders, Valentina Ciuffi and Joseph Grima, have said that this nomadic approach is partly a way to avoid contributing to gentrification. After the week ends, life can go back to the way it was — even if that means that a site returns to relative obscurity. Yet given the potential of these locations, this can often feel like a missed opportunity.

This year was different in that Alcova’s temporary home — Ex Macello, an erstwhile abattoir — is already in the midst of transformation. In July 2021, a team including real estate company Redo Sgr and design firms Snøhetta and Stantec won the C40 Reinventing Cities competition with a plan to re­imagine the complex as Europe’s largest social housing project. (The mixed-use neighbourhood will also include free-market housing, offices, schools and a museum.) The first stage will be completed over the next five years.

In a nod to this ongoing project, Stantec’s Italy office dedicated an area of Alcova to a catalogue of building components that placed the site’s history — and its work-in-progress nature — front and centre. Fixtures like gates, hooks and lamps sat in a colour-blocked grid on the floor, while larger elements like doors were documented in photos that wallpapered the room. Exhibition sponsor Artemide provided accompanying lighting.

“When you approach these resources at an object scale, it valorizes their presence so that people can appreciate what we’re working to preserve,” explains Stantec architect Valentina Mariani, who led the Alcova installation and is also working on Ex Macello’s redevelopment. “I’m at this site almost every day, and it made me so happy to see it full of people — it shows what these areas can bring to the community.” Still, it requires a conscious design team to uphold an industrial building’s historical integrity. “People kept asking me if we were going to tear it all down,” says Mariani. “No!”

Milan Design Week is grappling with the waste produced by an event that lasts for just a short period of time. One solution is to take inspiration from nose-to-tail butchers’ shops by embracing overlooked venues — all the while strategizing about ways to bolster their year-round appeal.