If you look closely, the world is ordered by barriers. It operates on hierarchies predetermined by economic class, social systems, race and gender ideologies. To study inequalities is to understand the fundamental ways in which the world was shaped by former colonial and current capitalist extractivism, practices often overlooked because they are upheld by a ruling 'majority' over an othered/marginalised population. How and what shapes do these inequalities take in today's age? Triennale Milano asks this vital question with the 24th edition of its International Exhibition, Inequalities. Open to the public from May 13 to November 9, 2025, the design exhibition dwells on the seemingly amorphous notion, lending space to often overlooked voices, perspectives and ways of being as an alterity to the Anthropocene.

Providing a lens through which to consider the contemporary moment, the institution's Instagram feed grounds the showcase in the glaring gaps that, once you see them, are everywhere—in our data, our cities, our environments, our living conditions. Posts on the feed dwell on data particular to Italy, further zooming in on the city of Milan. These, designed by London-based firm Pentagram, present facts on the discrepancies that exist in our world—where women and LGBTQIA+ communities continue to be discriminated against, economic class restricts certain resources for itself, or the climate crisis and genocide disproportionately affect certain groups. In revealing and contending with these gaps or barriers to access, the most vital question an institution such as Triennale Milano (one of the oldest international design expositions in the world) can pose is simply: What role does design play in alleviating such injustice? Is design to be seen as a disruptive tool with the capacity to affect solutions, or more forebearingly, is design a 'matter of concern' in an unjust world?

For the 24th iteration (the fourth after a 20 year hiatus), the institution gathers nine curators, five Milan-based educational institutes, collaborations with over 20 international organisations such as the Norman Foster Foundation and 43 international participations to host shows on disparate themes, foregrounding concerns over biodiversity, social inequality and the unequal distribution of housing, sanitation and other basic rights. Apart from displays, an engaging public programme is planned to ensure as many perspectives get a spot on stage. "The pre-condition of any possible vision of the future or strategy for the future is what [led us to think about] Inequalities as a key entity for the exhibition," Stefano Boeri, president of Triennale Milano, stressed in an exclusive conversation with STIR on the opening of the show. 

The projects are spread across two broad categories, under which more specific themes and subjects are touched upon—the geopolitics of inequalities and the biopolitics of inequalities. While this seems like a faint attempt to cover as much breadth as possible, the range of responses, from looking at something as infinitesimal as microbes to considering an alternative city based on human-animal cohabitation is fascinating. As one enters the Palazzo dell'Arte, which houses the main sections of the exhibition, one encounters a screen with graphics by Pentagram providing statistics that reveal the disproportionate distribution of privileges. "Numbers don't lie," as Boeri notes in the conversation. These, along with data researcher and information designer Federica Fragapane's large-scale installation Shapes of Inequalities, become a primer for visitors on the ethics underpinning the show.

Within the purview of geopolitics, which is explored on the ground floor of the museum, is Italian architect and curator Nina Bassoli's expansive examination of urban environments and how these spaces perpetuate disparities among people. Hans Ulrich Obrist and Natalia Grabowska's Radio Ballads which was conceived for the Serpentine explores questions of labour and carework. Seble Woldeghiorghis and Damiano Gullì's project, spotlighting the relevance of Black History Month Milan, makes space for an often marginalised community. The showcase for Cities includes two projects specially commissioned for Inequalities: Kimia Zabihyan's (Grenfell Next of Kin) Grenfell Tower. Total System Failure and a film by Amos Gitai. Explaining the decision to include a project centred on one of London's most recent and devastating tragedies (the Grenfell Fire), Bassoli notes, "A case of absolute inequality [was] the beginning of an activist movement...to build consciousness to change the future."

Bassoli hopes to explore how urban planning and architecture can restore a balance between the inhabitants of a city and the opportunities it claims to present with her exhibition. A careful study of the urban and social fabric of any region will make it abundantly clear that these spaces, instead of providing better access to opportunity or amenity, seem to diminish them. Meanwhile, rapid urbanisation and demand for natural resources further deplete and subjugate natural landscapes. Pitting different urban morphologies, such as informal settlements or skyscrapers, acts of community and imbalances between nature and the manmade, Bassoli portrays the spaces within which possibilities for alternatives occur.

In the show, projects by notable architects working towards sustainable futures by adopting strategies such as adaptive reuse, vernacular architectures, indigenous-based systems and even more than human collaborations, provide a way to imagine cities otherwise. The 35 diverse participants in the show include emerging voices such as Boonserm Premthada, Tosin Oshinowo, Space Caviar, Limbo Accra and Marina Otero Verzier alongside established studios such as Anna Heringer, Noura Al Sayeh, DnA Design and Architecture, People's Architecture Office and Kazuyo Sejima.

A few projects also train their lens on Milan to gesture towards specificity in context. The Space of Inequalities: Environment, Mobility and Citizenship, curated by DAStU and CRAFT with Politecnico di Milano, explores three key themes: the uneven impact of climate change and health related issues, the imbalance in distribution of resources in different territories and the denial of citizenship to refugees and hence their exclusion from housing or public service programmes. Similarly, Milano. Paradoxes and Opportunities by Damiano Gullì and Jermay Michael Gabriel critiques the fragmented urban fabric of the Italian city, with a focus on the lived realities of the black community.

The first floor moves away from our imbalanced relationship to terrain and resources to focus on the biopolitics of being. The various projects dwell on the relationships between different classes and genders, our relationships to ecologies (natural and microbial) and how hierarchies determine our relationship to health. While Giovanni Agosti and Jacopo Stoppa's showcase Portraits of Inequality reveals how the city of Milan was shaped by different economic classes; architectural historians Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley's research-based display We the Bacteria dwells on the linkages between the microbial and the human and how these have shaped modern architecture; and Telmo Pievani's project A Journey into Biodiversity. Eight forays on Planet Earth speculates on the possibilities of cities organised by non-human organisms such as octopi and beavers. Also on this floor, the director of Triennale's Design Museum, Marco Sammicheli and Nic Palmarini's speculative proposal The Republic of Longevity. In Health Equality We Trust examines the politics of health; and Theaster Gates' installation Clay Corpus is a meditation on everyday objects through the works of Yoshihiro Koide and Ettore Sottsass.

Juxtaposing the microbes that live in our intestines to those that inhabit the planet with us, scholars Colomina and Wigley unravel the complex relationships of the microbial world and the built environment. With a focus on something that is inherently invisible to the naked eye, the scholars reveal how much of our built spaces are centred on the idea of cleaning and disinfecting, while they argue that it is, in fact, bacteria that are responsible for humanity's resilience and well-being. Their display includes a film created by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, The Corner Problem, which documents the cleaning process of the Triennale building. Elaborating on their particular critique of the modernist obsession with sanitation that began in 2009 with Colomina's book X-Ray Architecture and was continued by the pair with a series of essays and an exhibition in 2022 called Sick Architecture, Wigley tells STIR, "We're made of microbes and we live in a world made of microbes. Then, 10,000 years ago, architecture came along and separated us from the soil's microbes and this [has had] incredibly bad health effects on the human species. Our contribution to Inequalities is to say, inequality just means poor health." Their research traces the deleterious effects of built space all the way to the Neolithic Age. As Colomina stresses, "Architecture created the conditions for epidemics [to proliferate]". Instead, the pair propose an architecture that works with bacterial matter as co-creators of the environment through nine proposed projects.

In a similar vein, Sammicheli and Palmarini's project, The Republic of Longevity, challenges the different ways in which we treat old age and the restriction of access to healthy living only to a few classes. The showcase is divided into five fictional ministries dedicated to Purpose, Sleep Equality, Food Democracy, Physical Freedom and Togetherness. The curators hope to demonstrate how simple practices can become powerful tools to combat illness. One of the core ethos for the show is to underscore the urgency of turning healthy longevity into a legislative objective.

Apart from the main show, which includes contributions from a pluralistic set of designers, artists, scholars and architects, what's notable is the list of international participants showcasing works for the design event. A cursory glance at the list of international participants reveals how the institution seems to stress the theme for the triennial by spotlighting voices from the margins, those not always included in events of this nature. On the other hand, the display at Palazzo del'Arte is a veritable who's who of intelligentsia operating in today's design landscape (and therefore showcases a very interesting collusion with the names present at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale).

Projects from international participants include an installation from Angola, Made in Angola, that spotlights artisanal skills and local sustainable materials; a documentation of liminal spaces and the ordinary architecture of Armenia called (ordinary) architecture; and a similar project from Cuba that focuses on the idea of a 'diffused urban' model. A contribution by Studio NEiDA from Togo critically examines the fashion industry and how tons of textile waste end up in West Africa. Puerto Rican architect and academic Regner Ramos has curated and researched the Puerto Rico project on display, Once Upon Three Femisites, that narrates the tragic murder of a Black trans woman in Toa Baja, revealing the intrinsic role spatial and digital infrastructures played in perpetuating hate and denying access to those considered other. Another fascinating entry comes from the Rom & Sinti community, who question the definitions of homeland and belonging with Motherland Otherland.

It's vital that institutions like the Triennale give way to the voices of those who have been systemically othered and the contributions from the international participants confirm this. We need alternatives to survive, a way to think about redistributions and reparations for countries of the Global South who bear the brunt of the North's extractivist histories. We need communal, horizontal models of practice. If anything, large design fairs such as London Design Week or even Salone del Mobile are operative in highlighting disparity, with exclusive districts in the city teeming with design enthusiasts, while the rest of the city is drained by this excess tourism. It is imperative that we acknowledge the ways in which design continues to uphold systems of hierarchy rather than abolish them. It bears noting that the Triennale itself is an exclusive institute, requiring one to buy a ticket or membership to enter. It, most of all, bears noting that while the intentions behind Boeri's organisation of the show this year are worthy and urgent, he is a white male figure in a discipline where women's work continues to be undermined or unrecognised. All of these issues, simmering below the surface of the show, only point to the urgency of the need to study Inequalities. At the very least, Triennale Milano points towards the right direction for the future.