FENDI announces the launch of the FENDI Design Prize, a new initiative dedicated to discovering and nurturing emerging talents and celebrating design and craftsmanship.
The annual award, conceived in the spirit of the Maison’s legacy of fostering innovation and supporting the next generations, is curated by designer Giulio Cappellini, who leads a selected jury of worldwide acclaimed design personalities, including Cristina Celestino, Joseph Grima, Neri & Hu Rossana Orlandi, Josh Owen and Patricia Urquiola.
The 2026 edition culminates in the announcement of its first winner during Milano Design Week on April 19th: VIA by Gustav Craft. The project is unveiled among a shortlist of six finalists at the FENDI Casa boutique in Piazza della Scala in Milan during a private event.
VIA by Gustav Craft
Every visitor to Rome has walked on these stones without knowing their name. Via begins there, with the sampietrino, the small basalt block that has paved the streets of Rome for two thousand years, felt underfoot by legions, merchants and lovers without ever being noticed. It is Rome’s most intimate material truth.
Via translates that truth into a collection of furniture. The woven leather seat is the Roman road, each strap a stone, each intersection a junction. The steel frame follows the surveyor’s grid, its weld joints left visible at every connection, the mark of making declared, not concealed. The rug is the aerial view of a Roman city worn down by centuries of living. The mirror is a razor-thin steel frame resting on a single rough-cut sampietrino block, the heaviest material in the collection holding the lightest.
Every object asks the same question: what does it mean to make something that lasts?
The winning project will be realised and presented during the December edition of Design Miami 2026, with the opportunity to develop a collection or a selection of pieces in collaboration with FENDI Casa in 2027.
