MAC - Lissone Museum of Contemporary Art
LISSONE DESIGN AWARD 2026
HOW TO LIVE?
Curated by Stefano Raimondi
The MAC in Lissone dedicates the new edition of the Lissone Design Award to the concept of living and dwelling. Featuring works by leading international artists, the exhibition reflects on the future of living, objects, and everyday life.
Opening: Saturday, October 10, 2026, 6:00 PM
(Giornata del Contemporaneo, the Contemporary Art Day
promoted by AMACI)
Dates: October 11, 2026 - January 17, 2027
The Lissone Design Award 2026 stems from the MAC's commitment to reaffirming Lissone's role as a hub attuned to contemporary transformations. HOW TO LIVE? is a radical, non-rhetorical question-one that probes our present-day relationship with domestic space. The homes we inhabit are changing faster than the habits we project onto them. Caught between automation, housing insecurity, symbolic overload, and continuous emotional adjustments, the act of living has become unstable ground that demands critical rethinking.
With the Lissone Design Award 2026, the MAC continues the research trajectory launched during the previous edition, "Abitare la città" (Inhabiting the City), which centered on redefining urban space as a testing ground for new ways of experiencing public life.
Today, How to Live? permeates contemporary thought. It touches not only on the home as a physical space, but on how we construct our daily routines, relationships, memory, and identity through the environments we occupy.
From this perspective, the Lissone Award 2026 approaches design as a cultural practice capable of interpreting the present, moving beyond a view tied strictly to industrial production. The exhibition brings together works by major international artists from diverse fields of contemporary research, invited to engage with the theme of living through distinct yet complementary artistic languages. Art and design are presented not as separate disciplines, but as frameworks for analyzing societal shifts.
Design is framed not merely as industrial design methodology, but as a medium for interrogating contemporary lifestyles. Objects, furnishings, interiors, and spaces become lenses to examine changing social bonds, identities, and modes of living-positioning the intersection of art and design as the main focus of the Award's research.
As Stefano Raimondi, Artistic Director of the MAC and curator of the Award, states:
"The exhibition arises from a question that is simple only on the surface. Today, living no longer means simply occupying a space; it means building relationships, identities, and visual narratives through the objects and environments around us. That is why we invited artists capable of taking a critical look at the contemporary world. Their works do not offer straightforward answers; instead, they open up new perspectives on how we live. The Lissone Design Award aims to be a space for research where art and design engage in dialogue to interpret present transformations and envision future ones."
The exhibition features works by John Armleder, Lynda Benglis, Marco Cingolani, Wim Delvoye, Gelitin, Christian Holstad, Bryan Hunt, Ryan Mendoza, Jonathan Monk, Luigi Ontani, Jack Pierson, Paola Pivi, Wilfredo Prieto, Rob Pruitt, Erik Saglia, Sam Samore, and John Torreano.
During the exhibition, a jury of curators from Italian museums will select the works to be acquired for the Museum's permanent collection through the Acquisition Prize.
With this edition, the MAC reaffirms the historical role of the Lissone Award as a key vantage point on cultural shifts. It reinforces the international reach of an event that, rooted in the Brianza region-one of the foundational hubs of Italian design-continues to foster critical reflection on the relationship between art, society, and contemporary life.
