Exhibition Design

Course

The IDEA Exhibition Design – The Architecture of Exhibition, first-level Specializing Master, aims to turn out highly qualified professionals in exhibition design.

Exhibition design is the planning that involves places, spaces, and architecture to set up conceptual apparatus, physical facilities, exhibits, and installations whose purpose is communication in the broadest sense.

Shows, booths, stores, trade fairs, museums, shopping centers, trading areas, meeting places, sales outlets, performance-art spaces, and public squares and streets all call on exhibition design in a crescendo of meaningful experience and with an ongoing refinement of skills.

Such skills and experience revolve around the specific relationship between architecture as ‘interior design’ and ‘exposition architecture,’ i.e. the set of dedicated exhibition techniques that take shape and become operative in these interior spaces.

The Italian Association of Exhibition Designers, IDEA, founded in 2007 by highly qualified professionals in the field, has as its mission to certify the quality of exhibition design and to highlight the growing role of the exposition discipline in the contexts of culture, marketing, and communication.  IDEA found the ideal partner for its Specializing Master in the Politecnico di Milano, whose tradition of excellence helped launch the program with enthusiasm and a passion for the culture of exhibit design, in keeping with the association’s mission.

Didactics

Training objectives

The objective of this Specializing Master is to train a new kind of professional designer whose specialist skills lie in the various application domains of exhibition design (shows, trade fairs, museums, sales outlets, events and stage setting).  These professionals need cultivated dynamism that will enable them to respond with expertise to the varied scales of exhibition design and to the multifaceted briefs they are commissioned with.  Above all, they have to have a high awareness of their professional identity.

This program includes an approximately 350-hour guided internship segment that aims to place the student as a trainee in an exhibition-design context.  Internships are available at major institutions that have a consolidated working relationship with this Specializing Master, such as:

MAGA di Gallarate, MART di Rovereto, Triennale di Milano, Sloowfood, Studio Angelo Jelmini, Studio Baldessari&Baldessari, Studio Carmadesign, Studio Cerri & Associati, Studio Crea International, Studio Dedalo, Karim Azzabi Architects, Studio Migliore+Servetto, Studio Origoni Steiner, Designnetwork, Studio Storage, Way spa, Benfenati spa, RetailDesign.

MAGA di Gallarate, MART di Rovereto, Triennale di Milano, Sloowfood, Studio Angelo Jelmini, Studio Baldessari&Baldessari, Studio Carmadesign, Studio Cerri & Associati, Studio Crea International, Studio Dedalo, Karim Azzabi Architects, Studio Migliore+Servetto, Studio Origoni Steiner, Designnetwork, Studio Storage, Way spa, Benfenati spa, RetailDesign. 

Didactic Plan

The lessons of the Master will be held mainly in Italian with teaching aids also in English. The project laboratories (workshops) and the reviews can also be carried out in English, as well as the presentations of the project papers and final thesis by students where it is expressed as a preference.

The Master is established with the purpose to highly form qualified professional profiles in the sector of the exhibition design. The exhibition design is an ambit of the project which has boundaries that are not definable in clean way; it uses languages and multiple tools that concern the “architecture of the insides” and the interior design: the constructive detail, the materials, the technologies, the graphics and the multimedia; it is a discipline with a lot of derivations and with numerous applications, to which the economic world and the cultural institutions assign and more and more will assign a fundamental role.

In extreme synthesis, the exhibition design is that project that, involving places, spaces and architectures, predisposes conceptual and physical apparatuses (exhibits and installations) aimed to communication in its widest meanings.

In this epoch of informative redundance and global and undiversified virtuality, it is in fact assuming importance the physical dimension of the expositive communication (an articulated and complex tool to communicate contents of any kind) that to the art of exhibition design it is submitted for being concretely revealed.

Temporary exhibitions, museums, fairs, stands, retail shops and places of the commerce, places of the meeting, spaces of performative arts, streets and urban public plazas: all these spaces use some kind of exhibition design in a meaningful growing of experiences and with a continuous refinement of competences that rotate around the specific relationship between the architecture, seen as “inner space”, and the “architecture of display”, i.e. the whole devices that in these inside spaces take form and operate.

Didactic Modules

First module: Frontal teaching

• Theory and history of exhibition design
• Theory and history of museography
• New Types of Permanent and Temporary Exhibitions
• Contemporary Art Languages
• History of applied graphics
• Design of public spaces
• Materials and technologies
• Lighting Design
• Multimedia
• Sound Design

Second module: Exercises with lessons of complementary subjects, divided into 3 distinct workshops

Workshop – exhibition design, museums and cultural events –

• workshop
• Graphics applied to the project
• Managing and organising exhibitions and events
• Lighting technology
• Museography

Workshop – Trade fair and exhibition stand construction –

• workshops
• Security
• Trade fair marketing
• Type of trade fairs

Workshop – retail space design – workshops –

• workshop
• Typology of retail spaces

Total internship hours: 350 h

Title Released

Students who successfully complete the program and pass the final exam will be awarded a first-level Specializing Master in Exhibition Design, IDEA.

Employment Opportunities

The expected job descriptions include:

High qualified freelancer, exhibition designer in companies, retail chains and shops, exhibition designer incompanies in the fair field, cultural exhibitions and events, communication agencies, exhibition designer with responsabilities interms of the cultural sector in culturalinstitutions, museums, foundations, public andprivate corporations, public administrations; experts in production and installation of exhibit systems.

Admission

Requirements

This program is aimed at those who hold a degree in architecture, industrial design, engineering, art history, cultural heritage, applied art or communication (humanities).

Foreign students may present equivalent degrees earned abroad.

The formal evaluation of the study title eligibility is by Politecnico di Milano. As a consequence the formal application should be done on the website www.polimi.it (the steps are described in the following weblink).

In particular, the steps that you will have to follow are those mentioned from page 1 to page 8 (by clicking on the following link you will find yourself directly in the same page shown on guidelines).

Deadlines

To take part to the selection process, the application form must be completed online within the following deadlines:

• EU/non-EU who graduated in Italy / EU citizens with qualification gained abroad within September 24, 2025
• for Extra UE citizens within August 24, 2025

Price

The Specializing Master costs € 11.500 (€ 11.000 Master fee + € 500 Politecnico di Milano enrollment fee). Exempt from VAT under Article 10 of DPR 633/72.

PROMO

EARLY BIRD: -10%
The promotion for those who have clear ideas, know which educational path can enrich their future, and can’t wait to get back to the classroom.

Deadline application: within May 19, 2025
Deadline for sending the signed contract and payment of the deposit of the participation fee: within May 30, 2025

FAMILY SUPPORT: -50%
A chance to gift your siblings the encouragement they need to invest in their future.

POLI.NETWORK: -50%
A promotion designed to strengthen the bond and identity among members of the Politecnico di Milano community.

FRIEND TO FRIEND: -20%
An opportunity to gift to a friend to make education the foundation of their growth.

BACK TO SCHOOL: -1.000€ on Specializing Masters
The discount for those who have already trusted POLI.design and Polimi, and wish to return to study and build their future.

PER MERITO
Intesa San Paolo supports talents and gives everyone access to training. Discover more details here.

Faculty