Materia, the Independent Design Festival of Southern Italy, announces its IX edition, evolving into MATERIA–Contemporary Mediterranean Fair. The event will be held from September 25 to 28, 2025 at the Ente Fiera di Catanzaro venue, marking a significant chapter for Mediterranean design.
After eight successful editions that have consolidated its position on the national and international scene, MATERIA transforms from a festival into a meeting platform, promoting sustainable design rooted in local cultures and open to the world.
The 2025 edition will explore the Mediterranean not only as a geographical place but as a profound cultural code, a crossroads of exchanges, contaminations, and visions that unites history, material, color, craftsmanship, and innovation.
The new venue, the Ente Fiera di Catanzaro, one of the largest covered exhibition spaces in Southern Italy, offers 5,500 square meters entirely dedicated to MATERIA, which will be the first major event hosted by this structure. This move represents a new challenge and a sign of growth for the festival.
The format of MATERIA, always dynamic and inclusive, continues to intertwine training, inspiration, and entertainment, involving a heterogeneous audience. The event will include:
open call, an opportunity for young designers to emerge and engage; exhibitors, local companies and independent entities that narrate design through the territory;
talk, dialogues and visions with industry leaders to explore new perspectives; workshops, practical labs to learn and experiment with materials and techniques;
experience, immersive experiences to actively and engagingly live design;
music and evening activities, to amplify the atmosphere and create new connections.
Materia is conceived and organized, with the support of the Calabria Region, by Officine AD, a multidisciplinary research laboratory, founded by architects Domenico Garofalo and Giuseppe Anania, which develops innovative concepts and languages, exploring the sense of the contemporary through the contamination between tradition, innovation, and everyday life, with an international vision.
The theme of the 2025 CALL is “MEDITERRANEAN between tradition and innovation”, a heritage of ancient stories, poetic suggestions and new perspectives, among materials, forms, types, technologies, smells, flavors and poetry between past, present and future. Designers, artisans and brands may compete for selection, by presenting prototypes, productions and
self-productions, physically realized. There are no limits regarding place of origin or age for applications. The selection of participating products will be carried out by a special prestigious commission made up of the organizers and important designers from the national and
international scene. To apply, it is necessary to send to the email officinead721@gmail.com the material indicated on the application form, available on the website materiadesignfestival.com, no later than 24:00 on July 6, 2025. A research grant of 1,000 euros is provided for the first place and 500 euros for the second place. Special mention for third place, dedicated to the young architect and great friend of the event Sergio Mirante.