While the show’s main thrust is featuring the finest in design and interior decoration, the Milan Furniture Fair 2016 also hosts exhibitions or installations aimed beyond these primary objectives. Here is a round-up of the must-sees at the festival, which runs to April 17:

Color and Material Library

Designer Hella Jongerius presents us with a work born from 10 years worth of research into the properties and possibilities of textures for future inspiration. The library comes together as a display of fabrics and colors that visitors can touch and feel.

COS x Sou Fujimoto Forest of Light

COS x Sou Fujimoto

Architect Sou Fujimoto and clothing chain COS blend nature and design with the ‘Forest of Light’ installation. This installation builds around projectors giving off cones of light that react to the movements of visitors, invoking feelings of transience and ephemerality.

Tom Dixon and Caesarstone’s Kitchen

Tom Dixon x Caesarstone

British Designer Tom Dixon and design company Caesarstone have conceived of four kitchen concepts based around the elements (air, earth, water, fire) to be displayed in the historical setting of the Rotonda della Besana. Each kitchen will exhibit special properties related to each element – for example, the Water kitchen reflects jagged frozen ice, while the Fire kitchen mixes blackened beams with gold to reflect ash and flame.

Touch Base

Designer Ilse Crawford and director of the Design Academy Eindhoven Thomas Widdershoven have an installation focused on the idea of human touch and contact, especially relevant in a society so saturated with alienating digital technology. The exhibition will have many features but one of them involves products created from human hair.

The Courtyard Village

Architect Diébédo Francis Kéké will be changing the courtyard of the Palazzo Litta into a “neo-African village”, with pavilions of stone and wood. The open and comfortable atmosphere contrasts with the cramped architectural spaces so common to many modern buildings.