From April 20th 26th, 2026, during Milan Design Week, Nike will present Nike Air_Lab, a large-scale installation devoted to Nike Air innovation. Located at Dropcity (Via Sammartini 72), the project will function as an ongoing research environment for designers, students, and practitioners, extending beyond the temporal frame of design week.
Air as material: from invisible force to design system
Set within five disused railway tunnels, the installation reconfigures architecture around air—no longer treated as void, but as structure, pressure, and design language. The project spans more than five decades of experimentation, from early engineering studies by inventor Frank Rudy to contemporary prototypes that anticipate future performance systems.
A journey through immersive laboratories
Archival material, including early Air Max documentation, leads into nearly 100 unreleased prototypes such as Air Liquid Max, FlyWeb, Radical AirFlow, and Therma-FIT Air Milano. Each tests different relationships between pressure, cooling, expansion, and lightness, positioning air as both technical system and sensory material.
Visitors move through a sequence of shifting environments: a workshop evoking aerospace fabrication, an Air Archive dense with design evolution, and an Air Library where a large-scale air form is repurposed into functional furniture. The installation operates less as exhibition than as working infrastructure—part laboratory, part archive.
Across the space, specimen tables and eight interactive stations open up processes of suction, compression, and cooling, while workshops and breathwork sessions extend the programme into live experimentation. Designed to remain active beyond the event, the site continues as an open-access platform for research and collaboration.
From the Air Tailwind of 1979 to the Air Max 1, inspired by Centre Pompidou, Nike’s engagement with air has long merged engineering and architecture. At Dropcity, this lineage is reframed through robotics and fabrication systems, privileging process over finish.
Courtesy of NIKE
