Triennale Milano Opens White Out: When Winter Becomes a Design Laboratory
At Triennale Milano, winter turns into a design laboratory. At the opening of the exhibition White Out. The Future of Winter Sports, sport entered the museum not as spectacle, but as a field of technological and cultural experimentation.
Curated by Konstantin Grcic together with Marco Sammicheli, the exhibition is part of the Cultural Olympiad of Milano Cortina 2026 and will run until March 15. It presents the mountains as an extreme testing ground for design, technology and adaptation. The title refers to that suspended moment when sky and snow merge, erasing all points of reference — a perfect metaphor for speaking about the future, climate change and new forms of design intelligence.
Set within the Design Platform, completely reimagined following the architectural renovation of Triennale Milano, the exhibition unfolds across twelve sections covering almost a century of innovation: historic skis and snowboards, futuristic helmets, sports prosthetics, Olympic equipment, as well as infrastructures and projects by figures such as Carlo Mollino, Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeanneret and Nicolas Ghesquière. Around two hundred objects trace how the mountain has always forced design to become smarter, lighter and safer.
“The relationship between design and technology is fundamental for Triennale,” explained Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano. “We are pleased to open up to sport on this occasion, alongside the Winter Olympics of Milano Cortina. White Out is dedicated both to the materials, equipment and athletes that shaped the history of winter sports, and to the future of these disciplines, which have always been linked to innovation. It allows us to address sport through one of the languages closest to Triennale: creativity and design.”
The opening night drew a large crowd of designers, architects, creatives and well-known figures from Milan’s cultural scene, all gathered to explore the most conceptual — and surprisingly poetic — side of winter sports. Among the guests were Edward Barber, Robert Stadler, Scott Cannon, Chris Dercon, Livia Peraldo Matton, Tommaso Sacchi, Stefano Giovannoni, Eleonora Chiari, Sara Goldschmied, and many others.
Blending extreme technology with environmental poetry, White Out doesn’t simply celebrate sport — it tells the story of a future in which design and nature will have to negotiate every centimeter of survival. Preferably, with style.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Ludovica Arcero
