This September, Indonesia Design Week will host 55 objects from the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection — the first stop on the Salone del Mobile.Milano’s new international journey.
The Salone del Mobile.Milano is taking its story beyond Milan — and beyond its usual April calendar. Its newest international tour begins in Indonesia, a market on the rise and a fast-growing centre for architecture, interiors, contract design and real estate. The opening act is one of the event’s most precious legacies: the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection, which will be shown at the Townhall of the Indonesia Design District (IDD) PIK2 in Jakarta from 18 September to 18 October 2026, as part of Indonesia Design Week.
The exhibition, titled the SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection Exhibition 1998–2026, is less a retrospective than a living map of relationships. Around 55 objects drawn from an archive of 415 trace the turning points of the design process — the moment an idea finds the right circumstances to become something real.
A third stop on an international trajectory
Jakarta follows Hong Kong in 2024 and the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka as the Permanent Collection’s third overseas outing. The choice of venue is deliberate: launching the tour in Indonesia means carrying SaloneSatellite — central to the event’s internationalisation strategy — to a place where the future of design is being shaped at the intersection of talent, business and culture.
Founded and curated by Marva Griffin Wilshire, SaloneSatellite is the Salone del Mobile.Milano platform dedicated to designers under 35. Since 1998 it has worked as a finely tuned observatory for emerging talent. Its Permanent Collection gathers 415 objects that narrate the most delicate phase of a designer’s journey: navigating prototypes, products, companies, museums, awards, materials and the manufacturing cultures that give ideas their ground.
The mission, in Wilshire’s own words
“SaloneSatellite was created to give young designers a place where they can be seen, heard and connect with the world of manufacturing,” Wilshire explains. “The Permanent Collection tells the story of this journey: prototypes that have become products, insights that have led to careers, encounters that have become design stories. Taking it to Jakarta, as the first stop on the Salone del Mobile.Milano’s new international tour, means continuing to forge connections and demonstrating that talent, when it finds the right context, can travel far.”
Wilshire will also join the Jakarta leg as an Ambassador for Italian Design Day, weaving together SaloneSatellite, Italian cultural diplomacy and the local design scene.
What visitors will discover
Conceived by architects Ricardo Bello Dias and Hariadna Pinate, the display recreates the atmosphere and layout of SaloneSatellite in Milan, preserving that familiar sense of discovery.
The selection spans several registers:
- Contemporary icons — objects born at SaloneSatellite that later entered catalogues and public consciousness, from Sebastian Wrong’s Spun lamp for Flos to Nendo/Oki Sato’s Chab tray-table for DePadova.
- Objects of enduring power — small but significant pieces that concentrate lasting design value in miniature.
- Encounters that matter — projects built on pivotal meetings between young designers and companies, some of which entered the collecting circuit or were acquired by international museums.
- Award histories — work connected to the SaloneSatellite Award, which celebrated its fifteenth edition in 2026; highlights include the Colibrì loudspeaker by Venezuelan designer Juan Cortizo for the Quibor collection (a Special Mention in 2025) and Nao Tamura’s Seasons silicone plates, which won at the Award’s first edition in 2010 and went straight into production with Covo.
- Compasso d’Oro winners — products recognised with the ADI Compasso d’Oro, Italy’s most prestigious design honour.
The exhibition also invites reflection on how the designer’s role has changed. Today’s designers increasingly act as authors, craftspersons, researchers and entrepreneurs — figures fluent in materials, local identities, independent production and new kinds of enterprise. In that sense, Jakarta is not just a host city but part of the story itself. The Plank Chair by Studio Hendro Hadinata, developed with the Indonesian brand EVERY Collections, makes a symbolic return “home,” while other projects with roots in Asia build a dialogue between traditional techniques, manufacturing cultures and contemporary design language.
A more poetic, experimental thread — central to SaloneSatellite’s identity — remains present, evoked by pieces such as Aether by Aatismo studio for Lumina, where material, light and perception come together to create an almost suspended presence.
A strategic setting
Indonesia Design Week is promoted by IDD and organised by Amantara, the hospitality and lifestyle arm of the Agung Sedayu Group, and takes place in the IDD PIK2 — a new district devoted to design, architecture and lifestyle in northern Jakarta. Here SaloneSatellite plays a strategic role: fostering dialogue among designers, business leaders, architects, developers, cultural professionals and creative communities in a region where design is fast becoming a driver of urban, economic and cultural growth.
The exhibition is also supported by the Italian Cultural Institute in Jakarta, underlining the part Italian cultural diplomacy plays in building new bridges between Italy’s design sector and South-East Asia.
More than a celebration
The SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection Exhibition 1998–2026 does not merely honour the past — it points it in a new direction. Every object on display marks a decisive moment: the meeting between a young designer and a company, between a vision and a material, between a local culture and a global market. From Jakarta, the Salone del Mobile.Milano sets off on a renewed international course, restating its role as a platform that forges relationships, crosses new frontiers and carries design toward places where the future is already taking shape.
Photo credit: ©Davide Colombino Salone del Mobile.Milano
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