Designing the Museum of the Future
One week in Milan to design the museum that doesn't exist yet.
Fondazione Pini · Milan7–12 September 2026ACME × Fondazione Pini
what it is
Adolfo Pini was a scientist who had chosen to live surrounded by art. When he died, he left his house not to an heir, but to an idea: that beauty held in trust should return to those who come after. The building at Corso Garibaldi 2 holds the most important body of work by painter Renzo Bongiovanni Radice, alongside an archive of documents, sketches, and letters. The upper floors were built as an artist's studio. Painting, science, and literature once shared the same rooms, without anyone feeling the need to keep the disciplines separate.
The question at the heart of the Summer School is a single one: what happens if this place — with its memory, its bourgeois architecture pervaded by art, its foundational vocation toward future generations — becomes the laboratory in which students invent the museum that does not yet exist?
Before any workshop, participants study Fondazione Pini: they walk it, measure it, question it. They read the letters in the archive. They stand in front of the paintings long enough to understand how they handle space, light, the silence around things. The Foundation's identity serves as brief, as material, as the generative constraint from which all the work descends. You design for a real problem, in a real space, with a real client.
2026 · sound
The 2026 edition is dedicated to Sound Design & Spatial Audio.
Sound is the first thing a museum doesn't show but that changes everything. This module explores how the sonic dimension — ambient composition, spatial audio, designed silence — transforms the perception of Fondazione Pini's spaces.
Participants listen before composing: the courtyard, the staircases, the rooms where Bongiovanni Radice painted. Then they build sonic prototypes, soundscapes, audio installations — inseparable from that specific place, that would make no sense anywhere else. The week ends with a public performance in which the collective work becomes a shared experience.
what you take home
Not an exercise. By the end of the week each participant takes home:
- a vision document for a real institution, presentable to partners and donors;
- a physical and digital mock-up of the proposed spaces and experiences;
- sonic prototypes — compositions, soundscapes, installations — born from the space and for that space;
- a project assessed by the people who actually run that institution.
It's the kind of work that opens real doors. The Summer School is also a moment where school, institution and the creative industry meet around a project, and the connections that form don't end with the week.
who it's for
The Summer School welcomes participants selected between the ages of 18 and 26.
The profile we look for is the disciplined curious: someone with a recognisable background — architecture, design, visual arts, music, communication, cultural studies — who feels the need to put it in relation with something beyond its own borders.
A share of international participants is expected, around 25–30% of the places.
the modules
M1 — Sound Design & Spatial Audio · 2026 edition
The sonic dimension as design material for the Foundation's spaces. Ambient composition, spatial audio, designed silence — and a public performance at the end of the week.
For future editions
- M2 — Set & Exhibition Design. The relationship between the permanent collection, the historic architecture, and the new experiences to be generated.
- M3 — Visual Identity & Communication. How Fondazione Pini tells its story — and how it might — through graphics, signage, digital communication, editorial design.
- M4 — Cultural Production & Project Management. How a proposal becomes something that can be built: organisational structure, funding models, audience development, timeline.
faculty
Curation
Giulia Ferrari — ACME lecturer, Head of Corporate Strategy & Innovation at Balich Wonder Studio. She shapes the thematic structure of the programme, selects and coordinates external presences, and oversees the collective creative process through to the final presentation.
Workshop
Painé Cuadrelli — sound designer, producer, a key figure in the Italian electronic music scene. He works at the intersection of music, sonic memory, and institutional spaces — exhibitions, installations, museums, theatre. Coordinator of the Sound Design course at IED Milan.
Process
Pierluigi Anselmi — the continuous presence: opens every morning, holds everything together, knows each participant and follows the work day by day.
Guests
A series of professionals from the shared network of Giulia Ferrari / Balich Wonder Studio, Fondazione Pini, and ACME. Some bring vision lectures; others join the crit sessions on work in progress.
Confirmed guests include: Alessandro My — manager of Diodato and a leading figure in contemporary Italian music; Alberto Molteni — artistic director of ARCI Bellezza, curator of one of the most significant music programmes in the city.
pre-apply
Pre-enrolment happens through an online form. You'll need:
- a motivation letter;
- a portfolio or a personal project.
Pre-enrolment deadline: 15 August 2026
Tuition fee: €500
This is a pre-enrolment: the enrolment will be finalised on site, once pre-enrolments have closed. The organisers reserve the right to postpone the Summer School to a date to be defined, should the minimum number of enrolments needed to run the programme not be reached. The new date will be communicated, once rescheduled, to all enrolled participants via the email address provided. Pre-enrolment involves no payment and is not binding until the course is confirmed to proceed.