MDW2025 – Day 4

April 11, 2025

The Balvenie, renowned Scottish distillery, debuts at the Milan Design Week 2025 by collaborating with British artist and designer Dr. Samuel Ross MBE and his studio SR_A. The immersive installation “TRANSPOSITION” explores the future of hospitality, combining industrial craftsmanship and natural elements in the stunning setting of the Napoleonian Foundries at 21 Via Thaon di Revel in Milan’s Isola district.

The work features impressive copper sculptures that symbolize the whiskey distillation process, creating a unique sensory environment. Inside the foundry, elements such as mist, shadow, light and sound combine to provide an immersive experience inspired by the alchemy of whiskey production. A sculptural copper bar serves customized drinks in unique glasses.

A video is uploaded here.

books and literature

Lolly Willowes

Sylvia Townsend Warner is one of the most interesting literary figures of the 21st century, and Lolly Willowes is one of her finest works, even more stunning if you think it was her debut novel. Self-supporting, intellectually independent, and consistently sceptical of social and religious

April 26, 2026 9:00 am

books and literature

Fugitive Telemetry

This is book #6 in the Murderbot series (yes, I accidentally skipped #5, I’m circling back to that), and I’m afraid I didn’t like this as much as the others. The whole investigation felt a bit rushed and, though the final twist is interesting in

April 24, 2026 8:00 am

architecture, engineering and construction

The Discipline of Inspiration: Valéry and the Algorithmic Mind

Paul Valéry rejected inspiration as miracle, seeing creativity as the discipline of thought in motion. This week, we parallel his notion of mental “operations” with computational procedures in design: iteration, optimisation, constraint, and recombination, and challenge the dichotomy between intuition and automation. Drawing on contemporary

April 22, 2026 9:00 am