Urban Technology at Milan Design Week 2026
Urban Technology at University of Michigan week 302
This week, Urban Technology faculty member Matthew Wizinsky stepped in to guest author an extra special edition of the newsletter before we disappear for the summer months. Matthew highlights a recent trip that he, along with a group of three students, took to Milan for Milan Design Week. Take it away, Matthew.
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⚡️ More on Milan + “Community Energy Futures”
For one week every spring, the city of Milan explodes into a spectacle of design and technology. Starting as a massive furniture fair, Salone del Mobile, this annual event has spilled out into galleries, pop-ups, installations, and public spaces all over the city. Fuorisalone, “outside the fair,” has become a global event drawing nearly 500,000 visitors annually into Milan’s design-chic urban kaleidoscope. This is Milan Design Week.
This year, students from the Urban Technology program at the University of Michigan were there to participate. Third-year students Jack Bernard, Pranav Boopalam, and Elijah Stowell presented their project “Community Energy Futures” at UNFOLD, a student design exhibition hosted at BASE Milano. They also delivered a presentation of this work to designers, professors, and students from around the world during the day-long UNFOLD conference on April 23, 2026.
Their project was accepted through a competitive review, organized by the renowned design school Domus Academy. UNFOLD brings together students, faculty, and designers to share the stage through the exhibition, conference, and faculty symposium. UNFOLD is now in its third year.
The theme for this year’s event was “Engage: Friction,” encouraging designers and students to move beyond buzzwords like “seamless” and “solution” to see the generative potential of friction. Twenty leading design schools from around the world were selected to participate.
The conference was hosted at Domus Academy’s campus in the Navigli neighborhood of Milan. The exhibition was presented at BASE Milano in the Zona Tortona Design District. BASE Milano is a multi-function venue that transitions from an exhibition hall by day to an intense EDM-saturated social scene by night: food vendors, rooftop spaces, pop-up bars, DJs, and a LOT of bass.
Bernard, Boopalam, and Stowell shared their project, which uses Interaction Design and UX/UI methods to present multiple, sometimes competing, scenarios that renewable energy microgrid systems enable. Inspired and directly informed by the city of Ann Arbor’s pursuit of a Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU), the project focuses on unanswered questions on the “social” side of this proposed socio-technical system. Ann Arbor’s SEU envisions a community-funded, opt-in system of networked 100% renewable energy resources, such as solar, wind, and battery storage systems. Sounds great! But, how might this system present new social frictions as neighbors begin to negotiate energy-related decisions together? Can these systems, including their interfaces, be designed to support more neighborly and less competitive models of collaboration? These are the questions the project “Community Energy Futures” engages.
Elijah said it was “such an honor and joy to be able to participate in the Unfold conference and to represent UT at a global scale. Seriously, this trip was potent with lessons and memories I will carry with me for the rest of my life.” Jack found inspiration in “seeing the large variety of global design perspectives, and gaining better visibility into how other parts of the world approach design challenges, and what factors shape their outputs. This international context helped me develop a stronger individual positionality as a designer, student, and global citizen.”
The project was accepted based on the screen-based UX/UI design, but exhibiting the work required a physical experience. With support from Taubman College’s SEED Fund, the initial project team expanded to include two M.Arch students to help conceptualize and build a physical model to present the scenarios depicted by the interface. Shaguun Patel and Naman Desai were amazing collaborators, joining what just may be the first joint M. Arch-meets-Urban Technology project to date.
Jack said that collaborating with Patel and Desai on the physical model “has become a highlight of my time at Taubman so far; what an awesome opportunity to learn, build, and create with two amazingly innovative and ambitious people.” He added, “It’s been awesome to be a part of this convergence of skills, ideas, and resources from across the whole college, bridging gaps across programs and majors to come together and produce a stunning final product.”
Elijah agreed, saying the collaboration “really challenged and bettered both sides’ communication skills to be able to find a common language and to trust the other’s decision-making in their expertise.”
The Urban Technology students were among only a small number of undergraduate projects represented. Most were produced by students in graduate programs. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of the Urban Technology degree, these students may not even consider themselves “designers.” Regardless, I’ve assured them that this achievement gives them major design “cred.”
For Jack, his “personal highlight of traveling to Milan Design Week this year was getting to meet and interact with other students from different institutions all over the world. From talking about their work and studies to exploring the city and dancing together, the experience reminded me that despite artificial borders and geographic differences, we’re all connected as humans and as designers. From my perspective, the US can be very isolating at times given its size and independence, but now more than ever it’s important to embrace unity and show solidarity both domestically and internationally.”
Of course, the city of Milan was also a major attraction in this whole experience, full of its own wonders and surprises. “I would say that the biggest surprise was the realization that Milan must be taken and appreciated on Milan’s time,” said Elijah. “By that I mean bulldozing through all of its highlights like a true American in a day will leave you with nothing but sore feet. Take Milan slowly, appreciate and match its relaxed pace to reveal its beauty.”
And if you’re bulldozing, you get thirsty. “I was very surprised at the lack of free/public water in the city,” Jack remarked. “I felt like I brought my reusable water bottle for nothing, as the only way to get water while out and about (or at a restaurant or at the hostel) was to buy a plastic bottle of water for a few euros. I guess most people in Italy just hydrate off of Aperol Spritz...”
On a personal note: This project began in an Urban Technology studio I teach called UT330: Interaction Design and Urban Experiences. Seeing work from this class presented so brilliantly by the students on such a global stage was truly a delight. I joined Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning in 2023, and this was the very first design studio I developed and taught for the Urban Technology program. Over the years, I have often remarked that it usually takes at least three tries to get a class right: the learning objectives and projects are dialed in, the projects are doing what they’re supposed to do, and the class yields the results you’re looking for. You can imagine my immense pride that the third edition of this class yielded a project that ended up at Milan Design Week!
Something struck me as I was engrossed in this bacchanalia of design, technology, and spectacle. At some point, I thought of the world’s fairs of the 20th century. World’s fairs saw nation-states put their best minds to work crafting dramatic experiences that showcased competing visions for new ways of living and working, often also inspired by new technologies. In the 21st century, design weeks, among other events, have taken on some of that role. Rather than nation states, we see designers, architects, technologists, artists, and provocateurs—many of whom are backed by global corporations—providing spectacular and often wildly divergent views of how life today and in the future might differ in so many grand and banal ways. As one presenter at UNFOLD remarked: All societies need their spectacles!
Jack summarized the impact of his experience: “Participating in the 2026 UNFOLD Conference at Domus Academy in Milan was such an exciting and unique opportunity. The experience helped to solidify so many concepts and ideas brought forth in our studio courses back home, and see firsthand how design can play a role in shaping the world around us.”
These weeks: The building is quiet. Students have disappeared for summer adventures, but staff keep moving. UT++ workshop in Detroit. Exit surveys and budget planning. Let the summer projects commence!