There comes a moment when a discipline stops describing the world and begins questioning it. Today, design is living through that moment: the moment of awakening. After decades of stasis, objects come to life and become, alongside us, protagonists in shaping the world.

For decades, designing meant giving form to objects, spaces, and experiences. Today, the meaning of design has changed. Objects respond, environments learn, surfaces anticipate. Driven by artificial intelligence and robotics, sentient materials and immersive systems, design no longer inhabits only physical space: it moves through it, transforms it, shapes it like a living organism. This is not merely about new technologies. It is about a transformation in the very meaning of designing itself.

The cultural event of the year

On May 20, 2026, at Spazio Lenovo Milano, Sentient Horizons 2026 – Design Awakens took place, the international talk promoted by Istituto Marangoni Milano Design that invited audiences to question new technologies — and to question ourselves through them.

There came a moment when a discipline stopped merely describing the world and began questioning it. Design experienced precisely that moment: the moment of awakening. After decades of stasis, objects came to life and became, alongside us, protagonists in shaping the contemporary world.

For years, designing meant giving form to objects, spaces, and experiences. Today, the meaning of design itself has transformed. Objects began responding, environments started learning, and surfaces anticipated our needs. Driven by artificial intelligence, robotics, sentient materials, and immersive systems, design no longer inhabited only physical space: it moved through it, transformed it, and shaped it like a living organism. This was not simply about new technologies, but about a profound transformation in the very meaning of designing itself.

Three visions in dialogue

Bringing different yet interconnected perspectives to the stage were three leading figures on the international scene, united by having made the boundaries between disciplines their chosen territory.

Carlo Ratti — Founding Partner of Carlo Ratti Associati, Director of the MIT Senseable City Lab, and Professor of Urban Technologies and Planning at MIT — has long worked at the intersection of architecture, data, and intelligent urban systems. His cities are not passive infrastructures, but organisms capable of changing in response to the behaviors of those who inhabit them.

Daan Roosegaarde — visionary artist, innovator, and founder of Studio Roosegaarde — has transformed technological innovation into a poetics of experience, combining light, sustainability, and perception. In his projects, technology is never an end in itself, but a language for reconfiguring the way we feel the world.

Claudia Schnugg — Founding Curator of the Universe Pavilion, curator and researcher at the intersection of art and science — builds bridges between creativity and technology, questioning the role of new forms of intelligence in contemporary culture. Her research revolves around a question that runs throughout the event: what does it mean to know, when machines know too?

Moderating the conversation was the journalist and strategic design consultant Laura Traldi.

Design as a critical practice

Each year, Sentient Horizons chooses to look where creativity and emerging technologies meet: not to provide answers, but to refine the questions.

In this edition, the stakes are even higher. Intelligence no longer belongs exclusively to human beings: it emerges in networks, urban systems, materials, and designed environments. Within this distributed thinking — which becomes an environment and ecosystem of languages and functions — design becomes the tool through which to explore the relationships between humans and objects across physical and digital space.

With Sentient Horizons 2026, Istituto Marangoni reaffirms its role as an international observatory on the futures of design — and on the cultural responsibility that comes with them. Because the real issue today is not artificial intelligence: it is the awakening of design itself.

Sentient Horizons 2026 – Design Awakens
May 20, 2026 | Spazio Lenovo Milano
Organized by Istituto Marangoni Milano Design