From 20 to 26 April 2026, Alcova Milano 2026 will open the Baggio Military Hospital and Franco Albini’s Villa Pestarini, creating a unique dialogue between architectural heritage, urban memory and contemporary experimentation
Just days before the opening of the third edition of Alcova Miami, the first official information has already arrived about Alcova Milano 2026, scheduled for April 20-26, 2026. The eleventh edition chooses two extraordinary locations that, each with a different language, narrate the city’s deepest identity: the Baggio Military Hospital and Villa Pestarini, a masterpiece designed by Franco Albini.
Two spaces steeped in history, now ready to transform into environments for research, experimentation, and design vision.
The Baggio Military Hospital: Memory, Nature, and Architecture in Dialogue
Alcova Milano 2026 returns to the Baggio Military Hospital, a vast complex immersed in the greenery of the Primaticcio neighborhood, designed in the post-war period. Already visited during Alcova 2021-2022, the site now opens in a new guise thanks to access to new and previously inaccessible spaces.
A church with the former rectory and a historical archive stand out, allowing us to understand the site’s stratification and its connection to collective memory. The complex’s evolution intertwines architecture and landscape in a fluid ecosystem, where the boundary between natural and artificial dissolves and leaves room for new interpretations.
Franco Albini’s Villa Pestarini opens to the public for the first time
Furthermore, just a few kilometers away, Alcova Milano 2026 is exceptionally opening Villa Pestarini to the public, the only villa designed in Milan by Franco Albini between 1938 and 1939. An absolute icon of Italian rationalism, it has until now remained a private residence.
The rigorous geometry, the pure white volume, the glass block facades, and the large windows overlooking the garden convey an architecture suspended in time. The interiors retain distinctive elements of Albini’s poetics: the suspended marble staircase, the sliding partitions, the custom furnishings. A perfect balance between discipline and poetry, it represents one of the most authentic expressions of his design philosophy.
Alcova Milano 2026 as a platform for experimentation and future visions
In this dialogue between conservation and reinvention, Alcova Milano 2026 is preparing to welcome international designers, studios, companies, and institutions, creating a truly temporary microcosm dedicated to the culture of design.
The event confirms itself as a fertile ground for experimentation, a widespread laboratory where space, material, and narrative converge to redefine the way we live and imagine the future. Alcova Milano 2026 thus establishes itself as one of the most anticipated events on the international design scene, capable of enhancing forgotten spaces and transforming them into settings for new aesthetics.
