From 5 to 8 September 2026, at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai (Hongqiao), The Italian Lounge returned: the platform that brings Italian design and lifestyle to CIFF. A space conceived as a meeting ground for companies, designers, institutions and professionals, made to foster cultural exchange and open new opportunities — for relationships and for business — between Italy and China.

Vudafieri-Saverino Partners led the art direction of the space and took part in a round-table discussion, with a talk by its Managing Director APAC, Sebastiano Cattiodoro.

On an exhibition concept by Davide Pavanello Lab, The Italian Lounge brings together some of the names of Italian design and industry — from Arflex to Foscarini, from Natuzzi Italia to Smeg — in an environment conceived as a choral narrative. Our art direction holds different languages within a single atmosphere, where design, hospitality and the culture of the table meet. It is our founding idea: to design relationships before buildings.

On 5 September, in the main talk "Italian Taste: From Space to Table" moderated by Prof. Francesco Scullica (Politecnico di Milano), Sebastiano Cattiodoro brought the theme of conviviality, underlining how, for us, a food space becomes an activator of relationships. He traced it through four of our projects, along two registers: the social table of open, urban conviviality (from Dry in Milan to Urban Hive in Brera, to the Falkensteiner Montafon in the Austrian Alps) and the kitchen as a moment of intimate sharing (Ristorante Berton in Milan). One thread runs through them all: conviviality as a way of being together that changes shape with its context, and that design exists to make memorable.

The Italian Lounge is conceived and organised by Edimotion, with GWA as Strategic Partner and under the patronage of Politecnico di Milano.