Sensory Landscape by Piero Lissoni unfolds as an unhurried sequence of rooms

Elle Decor Italia presented Sensory Landscape, an immersive exhibition conceived by Piero Lissoni and his studio Lissoni & Partners, set within the historic rooms of Palazzo Bovara, Milan, during Milan Design Week 2026. The landscape design for the project is curated by Studio Antonio Perazzi, completing a multidisciplinary exploration of perception and space. “The project stems from a twofold tension: the idea that the senses, which can be more than five, are instruments of knowledge, coupled with the desire to subtract, reduce and take the experience of living to a dimension that is clearer, leaner and almost radical,” the official release reads.

For the project's interior design, the Italian architect stripped the palazzo of decorative excess, transforming it into a sequence of environments that function not as a linear narrative, but as an open interchange—a fluid constellation of encounters. “Each space is a statement: the food is food, the water is water, the books are books, the art is art. Nothing is mediated, nothing is ‘decorated’ so as to be more acceptable. Everything is exactly what it is,” the press release reads.

At the conceptual core of Sensory Landscape, which was on view from April 20 – 26, 2026, was the idea of a ‘sixth sense’: a form of rationality that sharpens perception by eliminating the superfluous. This approach positions the design exhibition in contrast to contemporary visual culture, which often leans toward saturation and excess, proposing a quieter, more exacting mode of engagement.

Visitors entered through a reinterpreted corridor conceived as a dreamlike garden, where natural and artificial elements intertwined to subtly prepare the senses. From there, a series of environments unfolded: a restaurant that expanded the ‘ritual of eating’; a kitchen conceived as a rigorous ‘technical machine’; a water-inspired space that is both ‘sensual and essential’; a room dedicated reintroduce the ‘lost sense of reading’; an art zone requiring ‘stillness and distance’; and a final immersive sound environment where ‘music envelopes all’.

“The pathway does not seek to be didactic, and there is no single interpretation, but rather it lets the senses come together, overlap and contradict. Each visitor constructs their own pathway, triggering perceptions that are always different, personal and unexpected,” the press release mentions.