This week the Disegno team is on the ground in Milan for the Salone del Mobile. Over the coming days we’ll be sharing our reflections from the festival and picking out some of the installations, exhibitions and launches that stood out.

Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg of Space Popular zoom with David Chalmers to philosophise about virtual architecture and the challenge of designing civic spaces in a privatised metaverse.

Minecraft is raising a new generation of young gamers applying their design skills to real-world issues, but its first foray into mobile AR gaming raises questions about surveillance technology.

From Disegno #26, Attua Aparicio Torinos creates emoji plates out of discarded porcelain from Jingdezhen and glass remnants.

Fresh lipstick and fat bacteria; Oli Stratford tours the studio of Shellworks, an experimental company making biodegradable beauty packaging.

Natalie Kane, Keiichi Matsuda and Florian Dussopt explore the design significance of the metaverse as part of a live event hosted at Molteni&C.

Weed’d head of design Simone Bonanni talks to Disegno about ceramic bongs and developing a made in Italy cannabis culture.

Roland Lamb, founder of Roli and creator of the Seaboard Rise 2, sits down with Disegno to discuss the philosophy of designing new musical instruments.

From Disegno #30, Peter Kapos reviews the Vitra Design Museum exhibition and book, German Design 1949-1989, and asks if romanticising the past poses a risk in the present.

Joe Lloyd reviews the return of Maison&Objet design fair, as an unseasonal heatwave bathes Paris in sunshine and a distinctly bon vivant atmosphere.

A recreation of Ettore Sottsass’s 1960s Casa Lana in the Triennale Milano offers a compelling portrait of the designer mid-career.

Disegno meets with MSCHF to talk how product design can be performance art, and whether a discipline entwined with commerce can still offer consumerist satire.

A new exhibition at Sven-Harrys Konstmuseum looks at the work of interior architect Åke Axelsson and how his 20th- and 21st-century furniture designs and architecture anticipated the need for responsible, sustainable design.

Yuri Suzuki shares Easy Vinyl Maker, the only affordable record cutter on the market.

From Disegno #25, Tamar Shafrir goes beyond the banal, circle-heavy interfaces of period-tracking apps to examine the profitable industry of harvesting fertility data.

Sony’s Hirotaka Tako and Philip Rose tell Disegno how industrial design is moving beyond plastic with the help of rice husks, bamboo and glowing digital fungi.

Michael David Mitchell wonders if the Snoo, a robotic crib designed by Yves Behar, is the solution to the alienation and difficulty of bringing up a baby in modern America.

Disegno speaks to fashion designer Mary Katrantzou about pushing the envelope for colour and pattern with her postage stamp butterfly tile collaboration with Villeroy & Boch.