From legal instrument to method
Salone lays the conceptual groundwork for Contract 2027
On 22 April 2026, shortly before noon, the opening session of the Salone Contract Forum convened at the Drafting Futures Arena in Pavilion 14: "Contract Sector Opportunities in a Transforming Industry". Moderated by Ed Stocker, Europe Editor at Large of Monocle, the hour brought together five voices that view the sector from very different altitudes: David Gianotten (Managing Partner, OMA), Luca Palermo (CEO of FederlegnoArredo Eventi, organiser of Salone del Mobile.Milano), Lorenza Baroncelli (Director of Architecture and Contemporary Design at MAXXI Rome), Daniele Tamborini (eco-design consultant and lecturer at Politecnico di Milano), and Gwenaël Nicolas (founder of the Tokyo studio Curiosity). The conceptual ground was thus broadly cast — from architectural practice to trade-fair logic, from museum curation to eco-design teaching, and from there to a designer's perspective from Asia.
The panel opened a double-header; the afternoon followed with Rem Koolhaas's lecture, the presentation of the Salone Contract masterplan 2027 by Gianotten, and the closing roundtable "Common Ground Among the Pillars of the Contract Ecosystem" (covered separately). The morning did the conceptual groundwork — and that is precisely where its substance lay.
Contract as methodology, not as project type
Gianotten set the tone with a shift that has become characteristic of him: contract, for OMA, has long ceased to be a category of commission and become a way of working. By his account, 60 to 70 percent of the firm's projects — particularly in the cultural and institutional sphere — now operate in this mode. The scales range from a single institutional project of a few thousand square metres (Gianotten named the firm's atelier in Amsterdam, the studio building in the Houthavens district) up to masterplans approaching the size of urban districts — he cited as the largest current commission roughly one and a half million square metres in one go, "almost like a miniature city". The longest-running example: Potato Head in Bali, twelve years on with a horizon of another fifty.
Methodologically, this means that interior fit-out is no longer planned downstream; finishes, sustainability, durability, life cycle, and what comes after the life cycle are pulled into the conceptual phase from day one. Manufacturers and users join the design process from the outset. On this reading, contract is less a question of volume or fees than a question of mindset. This shift in definition ran as a leitmotif through the panel — and collided with received assumptions more than once.
The misconceptions Salone wants to dispel
Palermo used his slot for a twofold correction. First: Salone is not changing, Salone is "evolving" — a semantic caution that, for an institution with more than sixty editions behind it, is thoroughly in character. Second, and more substantive: the term contract is systematically misunderstood within the sector. First misconception: contract equals hospitality. The field also encompasses public spaces, offices, and the marine sector — hospitality is merely its most visible segment. Second misconception: contract is a volume game played at low prices. Anyone who has seen a four-star hotel in the Gulf or a new financial building in New York knows the opposite holds. Third, and the most relevant for manufacturers: "I make a good piece of furniture, therefore I am ready for contract." That, too, said Palermo, is a category error. Contract is service, ecosystem, bundled competence — not the next sales channel for a good product.
With nearly 1,900 exhibitors in the 2026 edition and a forecast of more than 2,000 for 2027, the Salone sees its responsibility here: not every company is geared up for contract, but many are in transition. The fair's task is to give that transition a stage — and to redesign the format itself accordingly. Concretely: in collaboration with OMA, the conventional square-metre stand logic is to be reworked into a more collaborative spatial setting in which the line between exhibitor and visitor is loosened in favour of shared making. The Salone, in a sense, is applying its own lesson on contract to its own product.
Eldorado with a learning curve: A designer's view from Tokyo
Nicolas brought what was arguably the panel's most pointed observation. From the perspective of a small studio that primarily handles retail and hospitality projects, contract is a new playing field — he reached for the term "bespoke", finding the English contract too semantically narrow. What is shown at the Salone in product form, he said, is not even one percent of the know-how lying dormant inside the manufacturers. A designer initiating a contract project brings a concept to a company — and then finds themselves on a learning curve he captured in a single image: "Like wanting to build your own car and the next day finding yourself working with a Formula One team. Suddenly you realise: my expertise is microscopic, the potential is exponential."
Out of that learning curve, he argued, comes the structural appeal of the contract mode. Designers here do not work on a trend cycle but on a five- to ten-year horizon; a chair whose technology does not yet exist can be part of a project precisely because the project itself is five years out. "Eldorado" was the word he used — because in this mode the designer holds control without being driven by market tempo. A remark left curiously unchallenged in the room, even though it advanced a clear thesis about power dynamics between designer and industry.
"Broccoli Architecture" — Sustainability as a system, not a label
Tamborini translated the debate into eco-design vocabulary. Sustainability, he argued, does not mean specifying a recycled material or declaring a future reuse — it means thinking through the entire path: resource, material, component, product, distribution, use, end of life. Rental models for interiors, product take-back schemes, the reintegration of components — these are precisely the levers that the contract mode makes manageable in the first place, because it binds multiple actors together for the duration of a project.
Gianotten supplied a phrase tailor-made for the conference circuit: "broccoli architecture" — buildings to which a green label is retroactively pinned without anything in the underlying system having shifted. Sustainability, he said, is not the outcome but the system behind the outcome. Industry on its own can innovate only in 5- to 10-percent steps, because larger leaps would devalue its existing inventory. Contract, by contrast, allows leaps of 50 or 60 percent because several actors share the innovation risk. A notably clear case for consortium working — and an implicit reminder of why small manufacturers cannot win this game alone.
Crisis as the normal state — and an open friction over geography
Baroncelli, the only voice from an institutional perspective, posed the uncomfortable question: if architecture takes ten years and the world has been running, since 2008, through a continuous cycle of economic, climate, migration, pandemic, and geopolitical crises — how can contract respond meaningfully? Gianotten's reply: crisis is not an exceptional condition but a human constant. Politicians think in two- to three-year horizons; that is their job. Designers, manufacturers, and clients, however, have the longer breath structurally built in — and should not allow themselves to be forced into the short-term mode of political decision logics. The response to crisis, on this reading, is not acceleration but trust over long stretches.
It was here that Baroncelli opened the only open friction of the hour: contract, she argued, is too often framed as a global game. She made the case for the inverse — regional value creation, regional supply chains, regional industry, sold globally. Europe, with industrial experience running from Olivetti to the present day, could find a technological lever here, particularly vis-à-vis the United States, China, and Japan. Gianotten countered calmly: global scale means that globally available knowledge is brought to bear; the outcome remains local. A difference left unresolved in the room but cleanly named.
In passing, but worth noting for the trade press: Baroncelli's diagnosis of a role shift. Magazines, she suggested, have lost their old function as trend setters; the anticipatory role is migrating to museums and to fairs like the Salone, which now does what expos once did — bring innovation together. (Stocker's dry interjection — "Don't say that, I work for that" — at least drew a laugh from the room.)
What smaller manufacturers can take away
In the closing stretch, Stocker turned the focus to the audience: small Italian design firms and studios looking to enter the contract sector — what has to change at their end? Gianotten's answer was leaner than the question suggested: not the company itself, but the mindset. Anyone who remains stuck in business cases, risk aversion, and questions of size will fail at the complexity alone. Anyone who accepts the consortium mode finds, in precisely that collaborative structure, the answer to the size question. The younger generation as a lever: because it does not take the industry's assumptions for granted. The simplest reformulation of the hour: "What do I contribute to this environment?" — instead of "This is the object I produce."
In this shift — from object to contribution — lies, in all likelihood, the core of what the Salone intends to stage under the contract label from 2027 onwards. It is methodological, demanding, and for many manufacturers still in need of translation. But it has one priceless advantage: it is verifiable. Whoever claims to be working in a consortium is either doing so — or not.
On 22 April 2026, shortly before noon, the opening session of the Salone Contract Forum convened at the Drafting Futures Arena in Pavilion 14: "Contract Sector Opportunities in a Transforming Industry". Moderated by Ed Stocker, Europe Editor at Large of Monocle, the hour brought together five voices that view the sector from very different altitudes: David Gianotten (Managing Partner, OMA), Luca Palermo (CEO of FederlegnoArredo Eventi, organiser of Salone del Mobile.Milano), Lorenza Baroncelli (Director of Architecture and Contemporary Design at MAXXI Rome), Daniele Tamborini (eco-design consultant and lecturer at Politecnico di Milano), and Gwenaël Nicolas (founder of the Tokyo studio Curiosity). The conceptual ground was thus broadly cast — from architectural practice to trade-fair logic, from museum curation to eco-design teaching, and from there to a designer's perspective from Asia.
The panel opened a double-header; the afternoon followed with Rem Koolhaas's lecture, the presentation of the Salone Contract masterplan 2027 by Gianotten, and the closing roundtable "Common Ground Among the Pillars of the Contract Ecosystem" (covered separately). The morning did the conceptual groundwork — and that is precisely where its substance lay.
Contract as methodology, not as project type
Gianotten set the tone with a shift that has become characteristic of him: contract, for OMA, has long ceased to be a category of commission and become a way of working. By his account, 60 to 70 percent of the firm's projects — particularly in the cultural and institutional sphere — now operate in this mode. The scales range from a single institutional project of a few thousand square metres (Gianotten named the firm's atelier in Amsterdam, the studio building in the Houthavens district) up to masterplans approaching the size of urban districts — he cited as the largest current commission roughly one and a half million square metres in one go, "almost like a miniature city". The longest-running example: Potato Head in Bali, twelve years on with a horizon of another fifty.
Methodologically, this means that interior fit-out is no longer planned downstream; finishes, sustainability, durability, life cycle, and what comes after the life cycle are pulled into the conceptual phase from day one. Manufacturers and users join the design process from the outset. On this reading, contract is less a question of volume or fees than a question of mindset. This shift in definition ran as a leitmotif through the panel — and collided with received assumptions more than once.
The misconceptions Salone wants to dispel
Palermo used his slot for a twofold correction. First: Salone is not changing, Salone is "evolving" — a semantic caution that, for an institution with more than sixty editions behind it, is thoroughly in character. Second, and more substantive: the term contract is systematically misunderstood within the sector. First misconception: contract equals hospitality. The field also encompasses public spaces, offices, and the marine sector — hospitality is merely its most visible segment. Second misconception: contract is a volume game played at low prices. Anyone who has seen a four-star hotel in the Gulf or a new financial building in New York knows the opposite holds. Third, and the most relevant for manufacturers: "I make a good piece of furniture, therefore I am ready for contract." That, too, said Palermo, is a category error. Contract is service, ecosystem, bundled competence — not the next sales channel for a good product.
With nearly 1,900 exhibitors in the 2026 edition and a forecast of more than 2,000 for 2027, the Salone sees its responsibility here: not every company is geared up for contract, but many are in transition. The fair's task is to give that transition a stage — and to redesign the format itself accordingly. Concretely: in collaboration with OMA, the conventional square-metre stand logic is to be reworked into a more collaborative spatial setting in which the line between exhibitor and visitor is loosened in favour of shared making. The Salone, in a sense, is applying its own lesson on contract to its own product.
Eldorado with a learning curve: A designer's view from Tokyo
Nicolas brought what was arguably the panel's most pointed observation. From the perspective of a small studio that primarily handles retail and hospitality projects, contract is a new playing field — he reached for the term "bespoke", finding the English contract too semantically narrow. What is shown at the Salone in product form, he said, is not even one percent of the know-how lying dormant inside the manufacturers. A designer initiating a contract project brings a concept to a company — and then finds themselves on a learning curve he captured in a single image: "Like wanting to build your own car and the next day finding yourself working with a Formula One team. Suddenly you realise: my expertise is microscopic, the potential is exponential."
Out of that learning curve, he argued, comes the structural appeal of the contract mode. Designers here do not work on a trend cycle but on a five- to ten-year horizon; a chair whose technology does not yet exist can be part of a project precisely because the project itself is five years out. "Eldorado" was the word he used — because in this mode the designer holds control without being driven by market tempo. A remark left curiously unchallenged in the room, even though it advanced a clear thesis about power dynamics between designer and industry.
"Broccoli Architecture" — Sustainability as a system, not a label
Tamborini translated the debate into eco-design vocabulary. Sustainability, he argued, does not mean specifying a recycled material or declaring a future reuse — it means thinking through the entire path: resource, material, component, product, distribution, use, end of life. Rental models for interiors, product take-back schemes, the reintegration of components — these are precisely the levers that the contract mode makes manageable in the first place, because it binds multiple actors together for the duration of a project.
Gianotten supplied a phrase tailor-made for the conference circuit: "broccoli architecture" — buildings to which a green label is retroactively pinned without anything in the underlying system having shifted. Sustainability, he said, is not the outcome but the system behind the outcome. Industry on its own can innovate only in 5- to 10-percent steps, because larger leaps would devalue its existing inventory. Contract, by contrast, allows leaps of 50 or 60 percent because several actors share the innovation risk. A notably clear case for consortium working — and an implicit reminder of why small manufacturers cannot win this game alone.
Crisis as the normal state — and an open friction over geography
Baroncelli, the only voice from an institutional perspective, posed the uncomfortable question: if architecture takes ten years and the world has been running, since 2008, through a continuous cycle of economic, climate, migration, pandemic, and geopolitical crises — how can contract respond meaningfully? Gianotten's reply: crisis is not an exceptional condition but a human constant. Politicians think in two- to three-year horizons; that is their job. Designers, manufacturers, and clients, however, have the longer breath structurally built in — and should not allow themselves to be forced into the short-term mode of political decision logics. The response to crisis, on this reading, is not acceleration but trust over long stretches.
It was here that Baroncelli opened the only open friction of the hour: contract, she argued, is too often framed as a global game. She made the case for the inverse — regional value creation, regional supply chains, regional industry, sold globally. Europe, with industrial experience running from Olivetti to the present day, could find a technological lever here, particularly vis-à-vis the United States, China, and Japan. Gianotten countered calmly: global scale means that globally available knowledge is brought to bear; the outcome remains local. A difference left unresolved in the room but cleanly named.
In passing, but worth noting for the trade press: Baroncelli's diagnosis of a role shift. Magazines, she suggested, have lost their old function as trend setters; the anticipatory role is migrating to museums and to fairs like the Salone, which now does what expos once did — bring innovation together. (Stocker's dry interjection — "Don't say that, I work for that" — at least drew a laugh from the room.)
What smaller manufacturers can take away
In the closing stretch, Stocker turned the focus to the audience: small Italian design firms and studios looking to enter the contract sector — what has to change at their end? Gianotten's answer was leaner than the question suggested: not the company itself, but the mindset. Anyone who remains stuck in business cases, risk aversion, and questions of size will fail at the complexity alone. Anyone who accepts the consortium mode finds, in precisely that collaborative structure, the answer to the size question. The younger generation as a lever: because it does not take the industry's assumptions for granted. The simplest reformulation of the hour: "What do I contribute to this environment?" — instead of "This is the object I produce."
In this shift — from object to contribution — lies, in all likelihood, the core of what the Salone intends to stage under the contract label from 2027 onwards. It is methodological, demanding, and for many manufacturers still in need of translation. But it has one priceless advantage: it is verifiable. Whoever claims to be working in a consortium is either doing so — or not.