A room with orange walls and yellow platforms displaying glassware, metallic objects, and decorative items, with modern ceiling lights above.

September 10, 2026

Words: Elizabeth Fazzare

DWA Design Studio: From Milan Design Students To Creative Partners

Alberto Artesani and Frederik De Wachter met as architecture and industrial design students at the Politecnico di Milano. Although their paths briefly diverged post-graduation, cutting their teeth with the likes of Patricia Urquiola and Vincent Van Duysen, they returned to Milan and founded DWA Design Studio in 2005 with a shared vision: to formulate research-based schemes that prove the sensory power of juxtaposition.

Early commissions were temporary—pop-ups and window displays, for such brands as Campari, Roger Vivier, and Zenga—yet enabled DWA to develop its approach: contrasting color, material, and geometry with a rigorous spatial eye and basic shapes. The studio’s work has since expanded to hospitality, office, residential, and retail interiors—including the colorful men’s and womenswear floors at the Rome department store Rinascente—alongside exhibitions that engage all the senses. Whether short-term or permanent, every project embraces and delivers the unexpected.

IDOLS 20years: DWA Design Studio

  • A room with orange walls and yellow platforms displaying glassware, metallic objects, and decorative items, with modern ceiling lights above.
    Caffè Populiare, a 2024 Milan popup for Lambert & Fils. Photography by Matteo Bellomo.
  • Two men pose against a white background; one is sitting on a wooden chair, wearing a black jacket and jeans, while the other stands, wearing a beige jacket and dark pants.
    DWA Design Studio cofounders Alberto Artesani (left) and Frederik De Wachter. Photography by Claudia Zalla.
  • A brown-covered book with a green label lies on a surface surrounded by scattered gray paper tabs labeled “USE ME TO REVEAL ALL PAGES.”.
    Caffè Populiare, a 2024 Milan popup for Lambert & Fils. DWA’s 20th-anniversary book, with graphic design by LaTigre. Photography by Claudia Zalla.

“Rather than relying on decorative gestures or luxurious details, we get inspired by the boundarylessness of art,” Artesani and De Wachter explain, “and prefer to create spaces through the interplay of forms, proportions, and materials.” For Les Eaux Primordiales at Alcova Milan 2023, for instance, their wood-framed towers presented delicate smellable beakers and cloches hosting clay sculptures infused with a new scent by the French perfumery. During Milan Design Week 2024, they transformed a former chocolate factory into a glowing-orange pop-up café for lighting studio Lambert & Fils—for which DWA has designed its new Rayons Verts sconce, launching this month at Format MTL in Montreal—and conceived Pedrali’s Salone del Mobile booth as a dreamlike deep dive into the furniture brand’s material history.

  • Curved display table with neatly arranged stationery, textiles, objects, and a tablet showing an underwater scene, set in a well-lit room with some greenery.
    Pedrali’s Salone de Mobile booth, 2024. Expériences Immobiles, the Les Eaux Primordiales 2023 installation in Milan. Photography by Matteo Bellomo.
  • Geometric wooden structure with glass tubes and flasks stands in a tiled room with colorful patterned carpet and large windows.
    Expériences Immobiles, the Les Eaux Primordiales 2023 installation in Milan. Photography by Giulio Ghirardi.
  • Green cylindrical metal structures stand on a grey tiled floor under a red ceiling with exposed beams and recessed lights. Geometric shelves and granite columns are also visible in the space.
    The womenswear floor at Rinascente department store, a 2021 project in Rome. Photography by Alberto Strada.

Another deep dive comes in the form of the limited-edition publication that Artesani and De Wachter have produced with fellow Milanese studio LaTigre for DWA’s 20th anniversary. It has no title, and the cover of each of the 100 volumes is unique. But all include what they call “accumulated traces,” drawings, photographs, materials, and notes that track the creative journey of this dynamic duo. dw-a.it

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