The ninth edition of White Carrara transforms the entire city into an immersive museum, where craftsmanship and innovation, local excellence and international vision come together.
Until September 28, 2025, the historic center of the “city of marble” transforms into an open-air stage for the ninth edition of White Carrara, the international design festival curated by Domenico Raimondi of thesignlab. This year’s theme, Design Here and Now, invites designers, architects, and artists from around the world to present original works made from local marble in dialogue with the present moment, in all its complexity.
After the 2024 edition focused on historical objects, the festival shifts its paradigm: marble is no longer just a vessel of memory but a living material for contemporary experimentation. The spotlight is now on innovation, research, and sustainability. White Carrara becomes a widespread creative lab, where art, design, craftsmanship, and technology intersect in the streets, squares, and workshops of the city. The festival’s beating heart is this collective dimension: a fully immersive experience engaging quarry companies, artisan workshops, schools, museums, institutions, and citizens, all revolving around the region’s production culture.
The festival opened on June 13 with Karim Rashid, one of the world’s most influential designers, joined by Ross Lovegrove—the London-based pioneer of organic-tech design—and Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the French architect behind Paris’s Grand Palais Éphémère. Alongside them, many other prominent Italian and international figures participate, joined by emerging talents and local enterprises.
All the works are created specifically for White Carrara and produced on-site in collaboration with local partners. A key new feature this year is the White Carrara International Prize, open to designers under 35 (but also to established professionals), which rewards innovative and sustainable urban furniture projects in marble. Winning entries will be produced by May 2026 and will become a permanent part of the city’s urban landscape.
n addition to the outdoor installations, local museums also play an active role. The mudaC – Museum of Arts Carrara hosts Stars and Dust by Vincenzo Marsiglia, an exhibition exploring the intersection of art, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, as well as Gianluca Sgherri’s Uninverso in the project room—an immersive installation that disrupts conventional spatial perception. At CARMI, the exhibition Per forza di levare—organized in collaboration with the Alinari Archives—explores the deep connection between sculpture and photography.
In many ways, though, all of Carrara becomes an exhibition: a place where the classical legacy of marble meets robotics and prototyping, where traditional craftsmanship coexists with mixed reality, and where design becomes a shared language—capable of narrating a territory in transformation and opening it up to an international dialogue.
For the full program and updates: whitecarrara.it