Old showers, unique furniture, borrowed favourites: highlights of Zurich Design Weeks 2026
Out of the series, out of time, out of the rubbish: Zurich Design Weeks 2026’s motto «Out Of…» was present in every one of my highlights. Three locations, six exhibitions – from disused SBB shower rooms to the House of Interiors and an office building in the Kreis 5 district that’s soon to be renovated.
For the fifth time, Zurich Design Weeks (ZDW) transformed the city into a design stage: 165 events at over 50 locations, including 62 exhibitions. The annual theme, «Out Of…» initially sounded vague – until I realised how many excellent projects thrived on that exact concept. A piece of furniture that breaks free from its series. A rug that leaves the floor. Waste that’s turned into a decorative object. Six exhibitions at three locations particularly stuck with me.
Location 1: the old SBB shower rooms
Out of Place: Dislocated Utility_Objects out of Place
With tiles, pipes, drains and signs of wear and tear, the historic shower rooms of the former SBB workshops are anything but a neutral white cube. That was the point. Natascha Madeiski and Paulina Reséndiz brought together works from design, art and craft in the space, moving between object, sculpture and installation. All the projects were taken out of their usual context – just as the location itself has long since lost its original function.
Their damp, tiled surroundings worked well with the objects: a rug by Thea Kuta and Grrrr looked like a precious find on the beach, a lamp by Hanya Leo like an elegantly floating jellyfish. Rarely is it so clear how much a space changes how we perceive an object.
Location 2: House of Interiors
Nine exhibitions under one roof – four of which made it into my edit.
Out of Series: Nils Nova x Iria Degen Interiors
Work by Iria Degen Interiors whispers rather than shouts with simple shapes and understated colours. A collaboration with artist Nils Nova resulted in twelve striking, unique pieces. For «Form, Farbe, Unikat» (Form, Colour, One-of-a-kind), the studio created a coffee table from the IDI Collection in a specially developed interim size and entrusted it to the artist. He draped his work over it like a dress. Twelve pieces, each numbered and signed by both artists.
Each MDF wood cabinet is primed and filled, then sanded by hand until they’re all the same shape. «It’s impressive that he knows exactly how much needs to be removed to make them all identical,» says Livio Brescancin, Member of the Executive Board at Iria Degen Interiors. «Paint doesn’t forgive any imperfections.» Only then is the colour added – sprayed in a booth like car paint, applied without gloves.
The result plays with the eye: what looks like a shadow is actually paint. What gleams from afar like a brass base is lacquered MDF. A video filmed on location showed every step from the workshop to the finished piece of furniture.
Out of Waste: Enga x Iria Degen Interiors
The starting point for this collaboration is wonderfully unglamorous: a bin. More accurately, the desire for one that’s attractive enough for the living room. «We’ve been looking for beautiful bins for our interior design projects for some time,» says Carla Biasotto, Product and Interior Designer at Iria Degen Interiors.
The shape’s inspired by botanical images: blooms translated into a calm, delicate silhouette. «We selected our own flowers and used them to develop the style,» says Biasotto. Enga then put the idea into practice: 3D printing with recycled polypropylene, combined with wood and flax fibres and also waste product from wood production. The result is a fibre composite material that doesn’t feel like plastic.
That was the challenge. «We wanted to move away from the cheap plastic look,» explains Biasotto. Recycled materials are often seen as inexpensive. Because this material can’t be washed out, the team designed it to be double-walled. The exhibition showcased an interim stage – further development will focus on aspects such as bins you can disassemble. This made the visit exciting: every step – from the initial sketch to the finished product – was shared transparently.
Out of Tradition: Where the Hand Remembers
The Myriem Himmich Gallery from Casablanca featured at the ZDW for the first time as part of an exhibition on Laila Fadaoui’s rug label Mrirt. Her works made of wool, leather and paper hang on the wall instead of on the floor: the Moroccan rug’s taken out of its usual space and becomes a textile sculpture.
The knotting technique is the same as is used for a classic Moroccan rug – only the finished product hangs on the wall instead of sitting on the floor. Craftswomen from M’rirt in the Middle Atlas have passed this knowledge down for generations: a skill that isn’t found in manuals, but lives in rhythm and hand movements. You’ll want to touch everything before it goes on the wall.
Out of Time: Objects of Desire by Nilufar
Nina Yashar has built one of the most important addresses for collectible design in the Milanese gallery Nilufar. For Zurich, she personally curated a selection in which historical design icons stand directly alongside contemporary works, from sculptural stone shapes to gleaming metal and delicate glass pieces. This is the high-end corner of the festival, but also a compelling argument for the fact that good materials last for decades.
Location 3: Quellenstrasse 27 in the Kreis 5 district
Out of Context: Raw Senses presents Selling Sunset
In a building that housed creatives for decades and is soon to be renovated, Zurich-based curatorial collective Raw Senses used this interim period to run an experiment. Behind the platform for contemporary design are Fabio Hendry, Giovanna Lisignoli, Sarah Quan and Sebastian Vargas.
The cultural professionals from the fields of design, art, journalism and curatorship became «temporary residents». Instead of showcasing their own creations, they loaned a design object from their own homes: something they’d chosen, kept and used. This is how design became accessible – not by novelties, but used, borrowed objects.
The public was also invited to participate, but at a price. Anyone wanting to use one of the spaces filled out a questionnaire online beforehand and paid a fee of 199 Swiss francs, regardless of the square footage they used. Admission to the exhibition itself was free. A total of 325 square metres was available, divided into units of one square metre each. How the spaces were used was entirely up to each individual: exhibiting, creating, selling, performing, meeting – the possibilities were deliberately left open.
This was clearly visible in two cases. Kim Pham used just three square metres and displayed a cotton blanket: one of her photos, translated into textile using the Jacquard technique. The blue gradients looked like captured light. On another surface, Yael Anders’ vases shimmered as if someone had fished them out of a glacial stream: 3D-printed aluminium in the shape of glacial potholes. Anders digitally captures what water has eroded over millennia and casts it in metal.
Whether it’s a disused shower, gallery space in the House of Interiors or a single square metre in an empty building, Zurich Design Weeks 2026 have shown that «Out Of…» isn’t a gimmick. It’s an accurate description of where good design’s created: namely, where something’s taken out of its original place.
The next edition will take place in September 2027. You can check out all this year’s projects at designweeks.ch.
Like a cheerleader, I celebrate good design and bring you closer to everything furniture- and interior design-related. I regularly curate simple yet sophisticated interior finds, track down trends and interview creative minds about their work.
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