MODULNOVA Lisboa Flagship Store
Sofia De=Francesco
Lisbon Design Week 2026
The Art of Hosting
For this year`s Lisbon Design Week, the MODULNOVA Lisboa Flagship Store presented an original and quietly moving collaboration with multidisciplinary designer Sofia De=Francesco — a project she named The Art of Hosting, and which asked a simple but resonant question: what does it truly mean to welcome someone into a space?
The answer unfolded not through grand gestures, but through an accumulation of carefully chosen details. A C1 Coaster. A T4 Tray. A Suspension Paper Derm lamp casting its warm, diffused light. A BYŌBU room divider standing like a quiet threshold between one moment and the next. Recycled materials and traditional artefacts, floral compositions and the gentle geometry of objects placed just so — each element contributing to an atmosphere of warmth, intimacy and belonging.
Sofia De=Francesco, whose Porto-based practice moves fluidly between product design, material research and object-making, brought to the space her signature sensibility: a deep attentiveness to structure, tactility and memory, and a belief that objects can be both grounded and poetic at once. Her work, rooted in Portugal`s craft traditions and a contemporary approach to form, found in MODULNOVA Lisboa an ideal counterpart.
Presented within MODULNOVA Lisboa`s architectural language — refined surfaces, precise proportions, integrated living systems — the installation did not compete with the space. It listened to it. The kitchen island became a table set for gathering. The living area became a room one might actually return to. What had been a showroom became, for the duration of Lisbon Design Week, something closer to a home in the fullest sense.
As visitors moved through the space, lingering over each object and each carefully composed corner, it became clear that The Art of Hosting was not merely an exhibition. It was an argument — for slowing down, for the value of the handmade, for the idea that the spaces we share are shaped as much by what we bring to them as by what we find there. This is what MODULNOVA Lisboa continues to believe: that a showroom, like a home, is never just a space. It is an invitation. And some invitations, once accepted, change the way you see everything else.
