Marco Sammicheli (IT) + Maria Walter Nielsen (DK)
L’Ambassade. Curating Design Diplomacy
August 30th – September 5th 2026
Marco Sammicheli Italy
Marco Sammicheli (Fano, 1979) is Curator of Design, Fashion, Crafts sector at Triennale Milano and Superintendent of Museo del Design Italiano. Since 2018 he’s been working as International Relations Chief Officer at Triennale Milano, where he’s supervising the International Exhibition program in collaboration with the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) and the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs. On the occasion of the 23rd International Exhibition he curated for the Italian pavilion the exhibition La tradizione del nuovo – A tradition of the new.
He has curated exhibitions in Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, and published essays in catalogs for cultural institutions, museums and private galleries in Europe and in the Middle East, with a particular focus on designers such as Zaha Hadid, Mario Bellini, Steven Holl, Bruno Munari, Carlo Mollino, Jaime Hayon. During the Salone Internazionale del Mobile he curated The Design City. Milano Città laboratorio, published by Forma Edizioni in 2018. Columnist for “Wallpaper*” and for “Il Sole 24 Ore”, he has contributed to several international magazines.
After graduating in Communication Science from the University of Siena and specializing in History of Design at the Bauhaus Universität in Weimar, in 2009 Marco earned a Doctorate in Design and Technology for the Development of Cultural Heritage at Politecnico di Milano and Pontificia Universidad Catòlica de Chile.
Maria Walter Nielsen Denmark
Maria is a Danish-born textile designer whose work focuses on the graphic language of textiles. After 15 years in fashion, working as a textile print designer for brands including Giorgio Armani, Replay, Arthur Arbesser, she opened her own studio in 2019, providing consultancy for the fashion and interior industries with a focus on textile graphics. Alongside her consultancy work, she develops her personal artistic practice in painting and textiles, culminating in her solo exhibition PLURI in Milan in 2024. Maria is also a professor at NABA Milano and Politecnico di Milano, leading courses and workshops on textile design and graphic expression.
www.motormaria.dk
L’Ambassade. Curating Design Diplomacy
August 30th – September 5th
Workshop Categories
The Workshop
Current shifts in social life and growing doubts in institutional representation require an update of design as mediator of society. Design has always contributed and reacted to politics, public authorities and mass communication; it promotes or criticises such systems and even builds up or destroys them. Taking a decisive part in the ways we are living together, its major task today is to support culture and education in their expression of values and engagement with the audience.
L’Ambassade is both a virtual and physical place where architecture, furniture, choreography, music, communication, textile design, and technology suggest a holistic possibility for dialogue and coexistence. We've got plenty to learn from graphic design, fashion, concerts, trade fairs and festivals, or from major events such as the Super Bowl or the Olympics: Design can turn all of them into tools for cultural diplomacy, open up tolerant communities, create spaces of hospitality and care for representation.
Our practice-based workshop seeks to construct a temporary pavilion functioning as an embassy, a forum, an editorial newsroom for live reporting, as well as a laboratory for flags, uniforms, banners and contextual activities—re-signifying the concept of diplomacy through design. The workshop is open to designers, curators, researchers, practitioners, and all those who question how design can respond to the contemporary reality of social and political environments.
Curated by Marco Sammicheli with the participation of Maria Walter Nielsen.