
The Lake Como Design Festival announces its seventh edition, from September 14th to 21st 2025 in the city of Como and around its lake. Through the Contemporary Design Selection Open Call, the Lake Como Design Festival invites independent designers and studios to think about this year’s theme, Fragments, through unique pieces, limited editions and serial products.
Brief
The seventh edition of the Lake Como Design Festival aims to be a regenerative effort where fragmentation, whether natural or voluntary, can be embraced as an opportunity for reconstruction and reconnection, memory or rediscovery.
Curated for the third year by Giovanna Massoni, the exhibition will be housed in scenic greenhouses and other spectacular sites in the Chilometro della Conoscenza (Kilometre of Knowledge). Located near the centre of Como city, the Chilometro della Conoscenza brings together a number of historic villas overlooking the lake through centuries-old parks covering a total of 15 hectares. In collaboration with Associazione Villa del Grumello e Antonio Ratti Fondation the seventh edition will increase the exhibition space with new corners of the park, creating an outdoor and indoor route surrounded by greenery and overlooking the shores of Lake Como.
The festival offers selected designers the opportunity to stay in Como for the entire duration of the event and be an active part of it, experiencing the most important moments in person.
Processes and Intentions
The Lake Como Design Festival’s Open Call focuses on three clusters indicative of processes and intentions that value the fragment as a material and/or immaterial component of a project:
Fragility – break, fragment, decompose: the object celebrates the aesthetics and mechanics of the potential breakability and transformations of an artefact (form, function or material). Ephemeral artefacts, metamorphosis, decomposition;
The regenerative act – recomposing, reconnecting, recovering: the object is the result of research into the origin and qualities of the fragment itself or is born of the assembly of different parts – materials, components, resources. The fragment as form and/or substance;
Memory – remembering, excavating, rediscovering: the object as a collection of images and metaphors, combining fragments of stories, techniques, rituals, traditions, intertwining of temporalities and cultures. The object becomes a living archive.
Eligibility
- Independent designers and studios may participate in the selection.
- Sponsorships by companies and galleries are also permitted submitting one or more designers.
- Unique pieces, limited editions and serial products are admitted to the selection for the indoor and outdoor categories for a maximum of two projects per designer, at least one of which must be a preview.
- The exhibition is collective and the positioning of the projects in the locations will be carried out by the Organisation.
- For exclusive use of exhibition spaces, please make a request to the Organisation, which will provide the relevant price list.
- Deadline for submission: Monday March 31st 2025.
Participation
The participation fee is 700 euro and includes:
- Press Tour
- N. 2 invitations to the opening cocktail reserved to exhibitors, press and sponsors
- N. 2 free passes with unlimited access throughout the festival
- N. 8 exhibition days open to the public
- Promotion on national and international press
- Content dedicated to the event on the official festival website
- Presence on festival’s Instagram profile
- Artwork’s insurance throughout the festival
- Daily security service during public opening hours
To participate in the Lake Como Design Festival 2025 selection, send your project accompanied by a short description to info@lakecomodesignfestival.com with the subject line LCDF 25 / CDS.