Some projects quietly grow over time. Others find their way onto an international stage.
This spring, one of those stories continues in Milan.

We are honoured to share that NarrativA’s founder and architect, Shai van Vlijmen, has been invited to speak at Masterly, The Dutch in Milano, the Dutch pavilion at Milan Design Week. Set in the historic Palazzo dei Giureconsulti, right next to the Duomo, the pavilion brings together over a hundred Dutch designers, makers, and thinkers, contributing to a broader conversation about design, material, and the future of our built environment.

Milan Design Week is not just an event. It is a temporary city within the city where ideas, materials, and people from across the world meet. From April 21 to 26, Milan becomes a living laboratory for architecture and design, where innovation is not only presented, but experienced.

On April 24, Shai will take the stage to share the story behind the Biobased Passive Home in Haarlem.

Not as a finished object, but as a thinking process.

A process of searching for balance between technology and the human experience of space, between comfort and ecology and between material choices and energy.

The Haarlem project explores how Biophilic Design and Passive House principles in combination with biobased materials can reinforce each other. Not as separate strategies, but as one integrated design approach. The bamboo façade, developed with MOSO and Awood, is not just a material choice; it is part of a larger narrative about renewable resources, tactility, and the expression of a building that breathes and changes with its environment.

At the core of the lecture lies a simple but urgent question:

How can we design homes that are not only energy-efficient, but also healthy, meaningful, and future-proof?

The answer, as always, is not found in a single solution. It emerges through an integral design process where function and beauty, building physics and material behaviour, climate and human wellbeing are considered as one interconnected system.

The setting of this conversation could hardly be more fitting. The Palazzo dei Giureconsulti, a 16th-century building in the heart of Milan, forms a powerful backdrop where history and innovation meet. Within its walls, contemporary Dutch design engages in dialogue with centuries of architectural heritage.

Alongside Shai’s lecture, sustainability expert Pablo van der Lugt will present “Building the Future with Bamboo”, further exploring the role of rapidly renewable materials in architecture and design.

For us, this moment is not just about presenting a project, it is about connecting!
With architects, designers, thinkers, and builders from across the world. With people who, like us, are searching for new ways of shaping a built environment that is both regenerative and human-centered.

If you find yourself in Milan during Design Week, you are warmly invited to visit us at Stand 22. Come by, join the conversation, and share your perspective.

Because in the end, architecture is never a solitary act. It is always a dialogue.

And this is where new stories begin.

You can register as a VIP guest via this link: https://www.moso-bamboo.com/nl/nieuws/vakbeurzen/