6AM glass furniture and objects reignite abandoned Milanese pool house
Murano glass studio 6AM has installed its creations, including candy-like glass cubes made for a Bottega Veneta fashion show, in Milan's rationalist Piscina Guido Romano for the city's design week.
The range of furniture and objects forms Over and Over and Over and Over, an exhibition titled to emphasise the importance of repetition in artisanal glassmaking.
From hammered columns to delicate sconce lights, the glass pieces are on display within the now defunct pool house of Milan's Piscina Guido Romano, a 1929 complex designed by Luigi Lorenzo Secchi.
The building's corridors, which include old changing rooms, are arranged around a central, light-filled hall that once housed the indoor swimming pool.
6AM's pieces line the various spaces like precious artefacts in a gallery, including a duo of monolithic columns made from three-millimetre-thick panels of rolled glass mounted to metal structures.
One column is vivid blue, characterised by silvery reflections thanks to traces of manganese from the production process, while the other has a black surface streaked with white.
Towering at a height of almost five metres each, the columns rise from the former changing rooms, which local people historically took advantage of as communal neighbourhood facilities even if they weren't using the pool.
"Despite their dark and opaque appearance, the glass surfaces catch the light in unexpected ways, producing a subtle shimmer that shifts throughout the day," said the studio.
Also on display is the studio's Paysage walls, a structural system created by local architect Hannes Peer as a play on his Paysage chandelier that he designed for 6AM.
The walls are composed of hand-textured glass plates joined together to form a continuous plane, to give an appearance not dissimilar to traditional glass brick walls.
One of the limited-edition walls is black in colour, which is rare for Murano glass creations because the material is expensive and technically demanding to produce.
"Once the black glass is melted it becomes almost impossible to fully clean the furnace for subsequent colours," explained 6AM.
"For this reason, the piece was produced during the final melt of the furnace that was about to be dismantled and replaced."
The building's central hall was left empty, save for a dramatic installation of the gleaming glass cubes that formed the seating for Italian fashion house Bottega Veneta's Spring Summer 2026 show.
Crafted using a cast-iron mould, the textured cubes come in 10 candy-like colours and were installed in a floor-to-ceiling transparent glass wall.
Old rails tagged with coat hooks also feature in the hall, which was used as an additional changing space after the indoor pool was drained.
Sequences of sconce lamps were installed across other sets of former changing rooms, with a mixture of striped and transparent patterns and boxy designs.
Elsewhere, a set of amorphous glass stools were arranged across a reflective platform to showcase their colourful bodies.
The building's back door was signposted with 6AM's recognisable glowing exit sign, made from screen-printed lattimo glass with a painted iron structure.
When designing the sign, the studio was informed by emergency lamps from the 1920s. It has become one of its trademark products.
This is not the first time that 6AM has inserted its intricate glassware in an old Milanese pool house. At last year's Milan design week, the studio placed various pieces in the basement of the city's Piscina Cozzi.
The city-wide design week is currently in full swing. See our curated guide of unmissable exhibitions and installations to help you navigate the annual festival.
The photography is by DSL Studio.
Over and Over and Over and Over by 6AM takes place from 19 to 26 April 2026 at Piscina Romano, Via Ampère 24, 20133 Milan, Italy. See Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events around the world.
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