By Cultural Affairs Editorial Staff
Prada Frames, the renowned annual symposium dedicated to bridging design, culture, and societal discourse, opened today in Milan for its fourth edition. Titled In Transit, the 2025 edition shifts focus from products to ideas, examining how infrastructure shapes the movement of people, goods, data, and power across contemporary life.
Running concurrently with Milan's Salone del Mobile, In Transit reinforces Prada’s commitment to fostering intellectual exchange beyond the realm of fashion. Curated by the esteemed design and research studio Formafantasma, this year’s symposium explores how digital revolutions, global distribution networks, and shifting mobility are reshaping daily life, while critiquing the contradictions of contemporary hypermobility.
The venues — the Arlecchino train and Padiglione Reale — serve as symbols of mobility and the socio-political forces that shape modern infrastructure. Discussions will unfold aboard the restored Arlecchino train, a 1950s masterpiece designed by Gio Ponti and Giulio Minoletti, and in the Padiglione Reale, a historic space within Milan’s Central Station once reserved for royalty.
Restored 1950s Arlecchino train, designed by Gio Ponti and Giulio Minoletti, serves as a stunning venue for Prada Frames 2025, embodying the theme of mobility. (Photos courtesy of Prada)
Design critic and symposium host Alice Rawsthorn introduces the sessions, guiding the conversations across a diverse range of topics. In Digital Infrastructures: Power, AI, and the Built Environment, Kate Crawford explores AI's role in shaping cities and labor, while Marina Otero Verzier examines Tuvalu’s plan to become the world’s first virtual nation in response to climate change.
Padiglione Reale at Milan's Central Station, a historic venue once reserved for royalty, now hosting Prada Frames 2025 and exploring the theme of infrastructure. (Photos courtesy of Prada)
In Global Infrastructures: Trade and Logistics, Jesse LeCavalier delves into how global trade flows shape economies, with Rose George uncovering the hidden logistics that sustain global commerce. Infrastructures of Power explores surveillance systems — from colonial fortifications to modern AI surveillance — examining their role in regulating movement and enforcing borders. Hito Steyerl and Samia Henni also question the role of art in challenging these power dynamics.
Subsequent sessions explore migration, ecological networks, space exploration, and the unseen infrastructures behind food and climate systems, with speakers including anthropologist Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian and design critic Paola Antonelli. These wide-ranging discussions challenge the boundaries of design thinking, moving beyond aesthetics to address the forces that shape our world.
Building on previous editions that explored themes such as forest ecosystems (2022), materiality and waste (2023), and domestic spaces (2024), Prada Frames 2025 reaffirms the brand’s role as a cultural patron, offering a platform for critical reflection on the systems that both enable and restrict our lives. Admission is complimentary but limited to registered participants via Prada.com.