Maria Karolidou: Design Your Mind

Inspired by nature, history, and the poetry of texture, these wallcoverings transform rooms into living canvases. Gentle botanicals unfurl like whispered memories, geometric forms create a rhythm of balance and order, and painterly motifs evoke landscapes suspended between dream and reality. There is a quiet luxury in their presence. They do not demand attention; they reward it. As the light shifts throughout the day, colors deepen, soften, and reveal hidden nuances, giving the space a sense of movement and life. Every wall becomes a story, every room a sanctuary where beauty is not merely seen but felt. To live with Fischbacher 1819 wallpapers is to embrace interiors that breathe with character and soul—spaces that inspire reflection, creativity, and comfort. They remind us that true design is not about decoration alone, but about creating an environment that resonates with who we are and gently elevates the experience of home. Εμπνευσμένες από τη φύση, την ιστορία και την ποιητική δι...

Plants absorb carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, sustain ecosystems, keep soils fertile and form the foundation of every food chain. For this reason, learning to respect them, to listen to them and to understand their needs, rhythms and strategies of adaptation can help us imagine a relationship with nature that safeguards the future of every form of life on Earth. Without plants, animal life—including our own—simply could not exist. A message that has also resonated in the world of art. In recent years, artists such as Brian d’Souza, Tosca Terán and Miha Godec have explored ways of transforming the physiological processes of plants into sensory experiences capable of bringing us closer to the complexity of the natural world. How? Sensors attached to leaves and petals detect the imperceptible bioelectrical variations generated by plants in response to environmental stimuli. This data is then processed by dedicated software and translated into sound, making audible an activity that would o...

Hidden in the shade of ancient olive groves and surrounded by granite monoliths and unspoiled nature, Gallicantu is a  stazzo  retreat in the heart of Gallura, one of the most authentic regions of Sardinia. The name means "dawn" in ancient Sardinian, and the retreat is, in the owners' words, the fruit of a labor of love for the island's countryside. Watching over the estate is "The King," a thousand-year-old olive tree, while a short climb up a dramatic granite megalith reveals the Gallicantu Crown, a rock formation from which the view stretches across the Aglientu region all the way to Corsica. The architecture draws directly on the local vernacular. The word   stazzo  comes from the Latin   statio , meaning a place of rest, and for centuries it has been at the center of rural life for the shepherds and farmers of Gallura, referring both to the farm and to the cottages the locals inhabited. Here, a main stazzo, a farmhouse, and a small tower hold five rooms...

At  Milan Design Week 2026 , Italian marble company  Budri  presented  Arc_Hive , a museum-like installation that celebrated more than fifteen years of creative collaboration with designer  Patricia Urquiola . Rather than introducing a new product collection, the exhibition revisited ten collections created between  2009 and 2024 , inviting visitors to reflect on the value of research, craftsmanship, and the evolution of marble in contemporary design. Installed in Budri's showroom on  Foro Buonaparte  in Milan,  Arc_Hive  explored the idea of  "slow creativity" —a response to the fast pace of contemporary design. Instead of focusing on constant novelty, the exhibition encouraged visitors to pause and rediscover projects that have shaped Budri's design language over the past decade and a half.  Throughout the exhibition, Budri demonstrated how marble can move beyond its conventional architectural role. By combining stone with ma...

At  Milan Design Week 2026 , Bang & Olufsen and the Italian natural stone specialist  Antolini®  expanded their long-term partnership with an installation that explored  the relationship between sound, architecture, and natural materials . Rather than presenting loudspeakers as standalone products, the exhibition positioned audio as an architectural element that shapes outdoor living environments.       Concept: "The Architecture of Sound"      The installation transformed Antolini's Milan showroom into a landscaped environment where: Natural stone, water, vegetation, and acoustics formed a single immersive experience. Visitors experienced how sound influences the perception of space alongside light, texture, and material. Bang & Olufsen proposed that speakers become integrated architectural objects rather than visible technology. Overall, the Bang & Olufsen × Antolini collaboration was less about launching a new speaker...

  Punk Witch Annabel Karim Kassar has restored and transformed a modernist Brera apartment designed by Armando Ronca, combining two units to create a daring reimagining of living spaces, where the traditional rules of interior design are broken, evoking different emotions as visitors move through the space. Conceived to accommodate a 10,000-volume book collection by Scottish economist George Kerevan, a 33-linear-metre brushed-metal library designed by Kassar forms a sinuous structure that runs throughout the apartment. Original features such as the wood flooring, handles, and kitchen and bathroom details have been restored from the apartment’s initial modernist design with newly created furniture, materials and ornaments added, reflecting Kassar’s life across France, Lebanon, Morocco, the UAE and UK. Fabrics from France, objects from Lebanese craft markets and hand-painted wallpaper add pattern, colour and texture to the space, while the grass provides a bold addition and will...

The Swabian Castle of Trani, one of Apulia’s most visited tourist destinations which stands directly on the sea, preserves numerous medieval artifacts—some displayed in the exhibition spaces, others still embedded in the walls or kept in storage. The  three installations  enhance these peculiarities, adopting different narrative approaches and levels of audience engagement: the first is designed as a tactile archive; the second connects the castle’s artistic heritage with the surrounding region through the visitor’s own creativity; while the third installation taps into visitors’ emotions. In all three, technology serves as an enabling tool rather than the focus of the experience, and it is designed to be accessible to visitors of all ages and skills. Το  Κάστρο του Τράνι , ένας από τους δημοφιλέστερους τουριστικούς προορισμούς της Απουλίας, που δεσπόζει ακριβώς πάνω στη θάλασσα, διατηρεί πολυάριθμα μεσαιωνικά τεκμήρια—ορισμένα εκτίθενται στους εκθεσιακούς χώρους, ενώ άλλ...

 

Preciosa – Drifting Lights  was one of the most mesmerizing lighting installations of  Milan Design Week 2026 , transforming the  TEMPESTA Art Gallery  in the Brera Design District into an immersive landscape where light, glass, colour, and movement merged into a single sensory experience. Conceived by  Michael Vasku  and  Andreas Klug , the installation demonstrated how contemporary lighting can transcend its functional role to become a medium capable of shaping emotion and perception.  At the heart of the exhibition floated  sixty suspended Bohemian glass panels , animated through sophisticated  3D light mapping . Rather than remaining static, the installation evolved continuously as colours drifted across the textured glass surfaces, generating an ever-changing choreography of reflections, transparency, and luminous depth. Visitors did not simply observe the work—they became immersed within it, surrounded by a constantly shifting atmo...