For three days ending yesterday, the gleaming glass-and-steel canyon of the King Abdullah Financial District became an unlikely outpost of Milan when the Salone del Mobile.Milano staged its first official foray into Saudi Arabia with Red in Progress, a carefully orchestrated three-day preview of a broader partnership with the kingdom’s Architecture & Design Commission that transformed the public realm with a large-scale red installation by Giò Forma, packed cultural programming curated by Annalisa Rosso, and, most crucially, a tightly focused B2B platform that brought Italian manufacturers face-to-face with the fast-evolving Saudi design ecosystem now supercharged by Vision 2030.
Amid the showcase, the comfort brand Desiree – part of Gruppo Euromobil – quietly stole the scene inside a Lissoni & Partners-designed Business Lounge by placing its iconic Lacoon armchair by Jai Jalan and Kara by Marc Sadler alongside the newer Rito by Matteo Thun & Antonio Rodriguez and Stum tables by Setsu and Shinobu Ito, pieces whose sculptural lightness and enveloping comfort seemed to speak the same language of understated luxury that the kingdom is increasingly seeking as it spends billions on new residential and hospitality projects.
With the Saudi furniture and design market already worth $6.6 billion in 2024 and projected to hit $8.7 billion by 2030, and Italian exports to the kingdom jumping nearly 17 percent this year to $311 million, the event was far more than symbolic; for Gruppo Euromobil, already entrenched with flagships in Riyadh and Dubai, it was the latest move in a deliberate regional strategy, while for the Salone it marked the laying of a cornerstone for a permanent annual fair starting in 2026. “To bring our idea of transversal comfort into a context that unites different cultures and sensibilities is both a point of pride and a natural step,” said Luigi Lucchetta, Desiree’s product manager, and indeed, beneath Riyadh’s skyscrapers for seventy-two hours the famous red dot of Milan proved once again that Italian design can be less a showcase than a bridge, turning desert sandstone the same passionate hue the world has come to recognize as the unmistakable signature of la dolce vita made object.
