NABA x FREITAG at Milan Design Week 2026: THE MESSENGER IS ON THE TABLE

NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, and Swiss upcycling pioneers FREITAG present “THE MESSENGER IS ON THE TABLE” during Milan Design Week 2026. Opening April 20, the exhibition at the FREITAG Store Milano showcases ten product hacks of the F11 LASSIE—the iconic small messenger bag originally designed in 1995—reimagined by students from NABA’s Design and Fashion Design Areas. The experimental works are presented within an immersive layout conceived by the Academy’s MA in Interior Design.

The name FREITAG has been synonymous with messenger bags since 1993, when brothers Markus and Daniel Freitag cut their first bag from upcycled truck tarpaulin in their Zurich apartment. Their original bag is now part of the MoMA collection in New York, and the brand has since expanded into numerous well-known models, like the small messenger F11 LASSIE.

For this year’s Milan Design Week, the Swiss bag makers challenged Design and Fashion Design Areas students from NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, to envision the "hack" of tomorrow’s messenger bag. In an intensive workshop, students explored value-based product hacks that embrace the FREITAG circular design principles. The exhibition showcases these prototypes and concept ideas alongside drafts, sketches, and material experiments from the joint project.

Under the guidance of Claudio Larcher (NABA Design Area Leader), Sofia D’Andrea (Design Area Academic Assistant), and Antonio De Marco (NABA lecturer), students developed customizations by questioning the role of the bag in 2026. The challenge pushed them to rethink Contemporary Functionality for our nomadic, digital lives and explore Emotional Durability by transforming the F11 LASSIE—originally designed in 1995—into a personal companion. Through Radical Circularity, they tackled modularity and disassembly, while using the bag as a Manifesto for social statements. Every hack remains rooted in the FREITAG core values: the recontextualization of waste, the uniqueness of one-offs, and a commitment to durability.

To present these ten unique hacks—created in pairs by 20 future designers—a small group from the Academy’s MA in Interior Design, led by Course Leader Germana De Michelis, developed and produced a dedicated scenography. This immersive layout provides a narrative context for the experimental designs.

The exhibition “THE MESSENGER IS ON THE TABLE” will launch during Milan Design Week on April 20, 2026 at the FREITAG Store in Milan