Formafantasma designs Ocean & Climate Village for Prada and IOC

Italian design studio Formafantasma has built a reusable, travelling science exhibition for Prada Group and UNESCO's ocean science body, on view at Prada's Luna Rossa base in Cagliari, Sardinia, from 10 to 15 October 2026.

The show, Ocean & Climate Village, uses what Formafantasma founders call "design as an educational tool" to explain the ocean's role in the environment. Prada Group describes it as a "travelling science exhibition". UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) – the UN body that coordinates ocean science – developed its content.

Prada Group supports the project through Sea Beyond, its educational programme on ocean literacy.

How do you make climate data land with a ten-year-old?

That was the practical problem. The exhibition is open to visitors of all ages, so the design had to work for children and adults at once.

"Sometimes the concepts [on show] are very abstract for us – I could tell you data, I could show you graphs and a number of scientific studies, but especially for lay people, it's important to find the hooks," Francesca Santoro, senior programme officer at the IOC, told Dezeen at the opening.

"I guess you will always remember this because it's beautiful; it makes [the information] look really nice," she continued. "The idea was to use design as an educational tool and as a way to attract people's attention."

What does the exhibition contain?

The show splits into four sections:

• One Ocean
• The Climate Engine
• Biodiversity
• Ocean Anomalies

Together they walk visitors through the links between biological, climatic and geological processes. Formafantasma worked with a craftsman from an Italian natural history museum to produce lifelike animals, including a blue crab and a turtle. The studio also designed the space on multiple levels to keep children engaged, and produced a leaflet that explains terms such as CO2 and biodiversity.

Why the structure can travel

Formafantasma built the exhibition from a lightweight, modular aluminium-and-wood structure that disassembles for reuse. After the run at the Luna Rossa base – the waterfront home of Prada's sailboat racing syndicate – the whole thing can be packed up and moved to a new site.

That mobility is the point: a science show backed by a fashion conglomerate and a UN commission only justifies its footprint if it keeps working after the first opening.

For Formafantasma, the project extends an established line of environmental education work. The studio previously published a picture book about the environment for children and was appointed ecology advisor for the Serpentine Galleries earlier this year.

Ocean & Climate Village remains at the Luna Rossa base, Cagliari, until 15 October 2026, with the modular design built to carry the IOC's ocean science content to audiences well beyond Sardinia.