Creating ecosystems
Anna Moldenhauer: How did the collaboration with Salone del Mobile come about?
David Gianotten: OMA has collaborated with Salone del Mobile in various ways over the years – through pavilions, installations, and dialogues. In 2025, the Salone approached us to work together at a more holistic level, inviting us to help envision how the fair could create new opportunities within a rapidly shifting geopolitical and business landscape. Through these conversations, we jointly identified Contract as one of the industry’s most promising segments. Since then, we have been working closely with the Salone to uncover latent opportunities within this field and to build the frameworks and infrastructure needed to support their development.
You are designing a forum for the topic of contract at Salone 2026 and the paths leading up to it. The topic and its potential for the industry are not easy to communicate, especially to such a diverse group of visitors. What is your concept?
David Gianotten: For us, Contract is a clear and powerful concept — it describes the ecosystem of relationships that enables different actors in the industry to thrive. At the same time, we recognize that for many visitors, the term needs unpacking. The forum at Salone 2026 is our opportunity to open up dialogues about this ecosystem: who the actors are, the roles they play, what they need, and how they relate to one another. Through a series of exchanges, we want to make this landscape visible and accessible to a wide audience, and in doing so, reveal the opportunities embedded within it. We will be advising the Salone team on the themes that will shape the Salone Contract Forum 2026, ensuring that the program fosters meaningful and constructive conversations. These dialogues will inform the development of the Contract Masterplan by OMA, and the forum will serve as a space to both reflect and test the ideas we are shaping. Ultimately, the goal is to build a shared understanding of the Contract landscape and to create a platform that helps the industry see its potential more clearly.
Maria Porro said at the press preview in Berlin that your perspective and approach are unique because, as architects, you know how to manage large-scale projects and, thanks to your expertship, can select the right spatial structure for visitors to experience the topic. At the same time, you would be able to provide with AMO the scientific research part, which is also essential for the creation of the mediation. What other advantages do you see in the interdisciplinary collaboration with the Salone del Mobile?
David Gianotten: A defining characteristic of both OMA and AMO is that we work across scales, typologies, disciplines, and geographies. This gives us the privilege of understanding the different stages in creating built environments, and of engaging with the needs and challenges of a wide range of actors — from raw-material suppliers to manufacturers to the end users. The collaboration with Salone del Mobile allows us to deepen this understanding. It offers an ideal platform to articulate the ecosystem more clearly, to connect different stakeholders, and to examine how their interests intersect. This interdisciplinary exchange not only enriches our perspective but also strengthens the research we are conducting for the Salone Contract project.
In parallel, you have developed a curatorial master plan for the pavilions of a contract area that will be presented in 2027. What is the goal here?
David Gianotten: We have only just begun the research for Salone Contract, yet we’ve already uncovered many promising threads that point to new forms of collaboration across the industry. Our goal with the curatorial master plan is to make these opportunities visible and legible — to show how the different actors, needs, and potentials connect. Ultimately, the aim is to create an infrastructure in which these opportunities can take shape and grow. We hope to be able to offer a spatial framework that supports ongoing experimentation, exchange, and partnership within the Contract ecosystem.
