Nike and Dropcity, an rising Milanese middle for structure and design, are presenting a preview of Air Lab at Milan Design Week 2026.
The preview, often known as NikeAir_Lab throughout Design Week, affords the worldwide design group a one-week-only inside take a look at the previous, current and way forward for Nike Air, with samples and swatches tracing the event of Air Liquid Max, FlyWeb, Radical AirFlow, Therma-FIT Air Milano and different improvements. The lab will dwell on as Air Lab — a everlasting fixture of Dropcity when the area opens its doorways to the general public this fall.
Design Week attendees who register will get first entry to eight device stations, every with cutting-edge equipment together with robotic arms, thermoforming machines, pneumatic cylinder kits and extra. Every machine acts on completely different elements of air as a design medium: visualizing (air as proof), forming (air as form), deforming (air as transformation), pumping (air as enlargement), suctioning (air as void), calibrating (air as impulse), cooling (air as subtraction) and blasting (air as pressure). Visiting Nike designers and Dropcity’s in-house staff will lead hands-on workshops all through the week centered on harnessing air in design.
“Nike has at all times had an experimental, hands-on tradition of constructing, so on our first go to to Dropcity a 12 months in the past, it instantly felt each acquainted and energizing,” says Golnaz Armin, VP, Design Studio Excellence. “Prototyping is a each day observe — an intuition to make, take a look at and refine in actual time, the place concepts are supposed to be worn, skilled and challenged by means of doing. As a lot as we embrace the most recent digital capabilities, the craft of making bodily product by means of an iterative course of stays important.”
That ethos is on full show at NikeAir_Lab, with almost 100 never-before-seen prototypes curated throughout Nike’s various design group. For the primary time, the general public can see up-close samples and swatches tracing the event of Air Liquid Max, FlyWeb, Radical AirFlow, Therma-FIT Air Milano and different product improvements.
In its Milan Design Week incarnation, the lab would be the first of 5 tunnels guests are invited to discover. The insights of Nike athletes, catalysts and trainers — together with Arianna Fontana and Hiroshi Fujiwara — will activate the Air Library within the fifth tunnel, whereas the Air Archives will current a uncommon take a look at early experiments by inventor Frank Rudy from the Division of Nike Archives, preliminary explorations for the Alphafly NEXT% supershoe and Nike athlete Religion Kipyegon’s Breaking4 pace swimsuit, together with different objects loaned by non-public collectors.
After Milan Design Week, the tools can be relocated to Dropcity’s different amenities, which embrace devoted websites of manufacturing for robotics, mannequin making, 3D-printing, textiles, ceramics, woodworking, carpentry, mosaic, recycling and extra.
“The Air Lab initiative advances an formidable and distinctive imaginative and prescient, proposing that design and manufacturing can depart a tangible legacy for the town of Milan and for the group of designers and designers related to it,” says Andrea Caputo, architect and founding father of Dropcity. “The lab can be operated by Dropcity as a civic facility, accessible to the general public. This initiative represents a concrete and forward-looking dedication — one which establishes a brand new mannequin of collaboration between corporations and analysis facilities like Dropcity, producing significant social influence on each native and worldwide ranges.”
By means of a 20-year settlement with the municipality of Milan, Dropcity is about to emerge as one of many largest structure facilities in Europe. Addressing regional and worldwide demand for accessible, high-quality workspaces, Dropcity’s ambition is to help the rising modern Italian design scene whereas remaining in shut dialogue with the trajectories, analysis and investigations of the worldwide design group.
Positioned behind Milano Centrale railway station and comprising greater than 10,000 sq. meters, Dropcity is targeted on supporting future generations of designers, providing exhibition areas and 300-plus workstations at backed costs for architects, product designers, graphic designers and different inventive professionals.
“Milan is a worldwide hub for creativity, tradition and design, and NikeAir_Lab displays our continued funding within the metropolis and the inventive group that brings it to life,” says César García, VP/GM, Nike EMEA. “By means of partnerships like Dropcity, we’re creating areas in Milan the place innovation, design and sport intersect — and the place concepts can transfer from creativeness to actuality.”
NikeAir_Lab is on view April 20 by means of April 26 at Through Sammartini 72 in Milan. The Air Lab will dwell on as a everlasting fixture of Dropcity when it opens its doorways to the general public this fall. Be taught extra and register here.
