David/Nicolas Explore Functional Wood Panelling at Milan Design Week

During Milan Design Week 2026, we stepped inside david/nicolas’ newly inaugurated Milan studio in the 5VIE district. At its centre is La Boiserie, the project through which the Lebanese duo anchor the opening as both a reflection and a proposition on what a creative studio is and how it should function, while also presenting design at its most considered scale.

“Inaugurating our Milan studio with La Boiserie feels both natural and deeply personal. It’s been part of our process for years and has now taken its own form,” says David Raffoul, cofounder of david/nicolas, reflecting on how the system has evolved within their practice.

La Boiserie is a modular wall system that reinterprets traditional wood panelling once used to structure interiors. Rather than treating the wall as a backdrop, it is reimagined as an architectural framework where surface and function merge, integrating storage, consoles, and built-in elements into a single continuous system.

The project grows from a simple premise: the studio is not only a place of production, but a tool that should actively support making. Designers spend much of their time testing, dismantling, and reworking ideas, and the space has to operate with the same precision as the work it produces.

“We see it as something that can keep evolving, adapting to different spaces while staying true to how we think about design,” explains Nicolas Moussallem, cofounder of david/nicolas.

La Boiserie builds on earlier explorations by the studio, including Casa Fantasia in Milan, where walls and furniture already began to merge into a continuous field. Here, that approach is refined into a more structured and adaptable system. Across the panels, subtle geometric interventions such as circles, triangles, and inlaid cuts introduce rhythm without disrupting overall coherence.

Everything is produced in-house, with materials developed through use and iteration rather than predefined outcomes. This allows the system to adapt across different contexts while maintaining a consistent logic.

Inside the studio, La Boiserie is presented alongside works from a private collection: De Natura Deorum by Carlos Aires, NYC Contemporary Ballet (1980) by Robert Mapplethorpe, a 19th-century Annunciation in a gilded frame by an unknown artist, and Luiza Mahin (2024) by Dalton Paula. Rather than sitting apart from the architecture, the works are absorbed into it, aligned with the same structural rhythm as the panels.