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Against the backdrop of the annual Milan Design Week 2026, where brands are increasingly using installations as a way to talk about technology, experience and the future, the Soundsorial Design project in one of the key exhibition spaces of Opificio 31 stands out for its rare clarity of purpose. The collaboration between IQOS and the French acoustic engineering company Devialet does not just present another brand installation with a spectacular scenography, but proposes a unique idea: to give sound a visible, tangible form. With such ambitions, Soundsorial Design has become the most convincing installation of the current Fuorisalone.
To fully understand this vision, it’s important to understand what Devialet is. It’s a French acoustic engineering company that has built its reputation on a combination of radical technological developments, precise sound, and industrial design. The brand’s work is based on 250 registered patents and a commitment to combining uncompromising sound quality with elegant, functional form. That’s why Devialet’s participation in Milan Design Week is a logical extension of its approach.
IQOS and Devialet describe Soundsorial Design as “a space in which sounds and voices take on a visible form, can be seen and their movement can be traced.” But it is important that the visitor here does not remain a passive observer. The space is equipped with interactive screens that can be touched, adding individual sound elements to the melody that sounds in the hall. In response, not only the sound composition itself changes, but also the lighting design, which reacts to the new acoustic impulse.
At the center of the installation is the Devialet Phantom Ultimate, the flagship speaker from the French company Devialet. The main effect of the project is built around it: the sound can be physically felt.
The project turned out to be more interesting than most brand installations at design weeks. For the most part, such works have a familiar structure: a distinctly designed space, a technological object at the center, and a set of visual effects designed to hold attention. Soundsorial Design uses Devialet technology not as an excuse for spectacle, but as a way to show that sound can change the very perception of space. This is the convincingness of the project: it allows you to experience it directly and at the level of sensations.
The collaboration is not limited to the installation itself. Together with it, IQOS and Devialet presented the Soundsorial Limited-Edition Capsule Drop, which included key IQOS models and Devialet Gemini II headphones. Both objects were decorated with a pattern in the form of sound waves. The design idea continues the idea of the installation – to give sound a visible form. What is usually impossible to see has become part of the decoration. At the same time, the authors of the project emphasize that each wave has its own unique pattern and arises only in movement and in interaction with others, so this pattern is read both as a sign of individuality and as an image of connection between people.
For IQOS, this collaboration has a broader context because in Milan the brand speaks about itself not directly, but through the format of a design installation, that is, through experience, space and form. In collaboration with Devialet, a company that has made acoustic engineering its main specialization, this approach seems particularly precise. Two major companies have tried to show their technologies as a phenomenon deeply intertwined and integrated into our everyday lives.