BITTERSWEET SYMPHONY

Bittersweet Symphony

April 20 – 26, 2026
At BASE Milano – Via Bergognone 34

We are pleased to be part of this year’s Milan Design Week with an installation by French designer Jean-Baptiste Durand, developed in collaboration with Base Milano , and with the support of the Institut Français.

Bitter Sweet Symphony is an immersive installation that explores the paradox of contemporary design practice. Caught between the desire to create new objects, explore new aesthetics, and pursue personal pleasure, the designer operates within a world marked by systemic instability—strained democracies, armed conflicts, health crises, and climate disruption.

The installation takes the form of a post-apocalyptic listening room. The atmosphere is desolate; a few artefacts remain, suggesting an enigmatic presence. Speakers emit sound within this stripped-down environment, placed directly in the soil, in front of construction tarpaulins bearing a text written in Ancient Greek.

Details—remnants of ritual objects and iconographic fragments—hint at the existence of an unknown and unsettling liturgy.

Domaine de Boisbuchet

Founded in 1986, Domaine de Boisbuchet is an international research center for design and architecture. The campus is surrounded by 150 hectares of protected nature in southwest France and comprises an architectural park of historic and contemporary buildings. Boisbuchet’s workshops, exhibitions, and events as well as a design collection and library serve professional guests and visitors from the neighboring and global community alike.

Jean-Baptiste Durand

Jean-Baptiste Durand is a designer based in Paris. In his personal work, he explores the interplay between architecture, scenography, furniture, and non-utilitarian objects.

Drawing on a range of technical languages, from ancestral craftsmanship to contemporary technologies, he engages in a form of sampling, creating compositions that evoke these different realms. His practice seeks to move beyond conventional distinctions between designer and artist, allowing intuition and the inspiration of the moment to guide the work.