milla novo renders her desert textile installation within a snowy alpine context

"The project, titled 'From Desert Sand to Alpine Snow,' centers on twenty hand-knotted fiber panels first commissioned for the Tanweer Festival in 2025. Installed in a 10 by 10 meter steel frame rising six meters high, the work stood directly on desert ground, its saturated colors vibrating against the pale sand and rocky escarpments of Mleiha."

"In Milla Novo's imagined Alpine version of the textile installation, a rectilinear glass structure frames a corridor of suspended macramé panels. Visitors enter through an arched opening and move between cascading fields of neon pink, marigold yellow, burnt orange, moss green, and sand toned rope. The panels stretch from ceiling to floor, their fringes hovering just above packed snow."

"The conceptual glass pavilion heightens the tension between warmth and cold, craft and precision engineering. It frames the textiles as if they were artifacts in a vitrine, while allowing the surrounding landscape to remain fully visible."

Milla Novo created 'From Desert Sand to Alpine Snow,' a large-scale textile installation comprising twenty hand-knotted fiber panels. Originally commissioned for the Tanweer Festival in 2025, the work was first installed in the Mleiha Desert in Sharjah within a six-meter-high steel frame, where vibrant colors contrasted against pale sand and rocky terrain. The artist subsequently reimagined the same tapestries within a transparent glass pavilion set against an Alpine snowfield, using AI visualization for the architectural and landscape elements while keeping the textiles entirely physical and handcrafted. The Alpine concept features a rectilinear glass structure with suspended macramé panels in neon pink, marigold yellow, burnt orange, moss green, and sand tones, creating tension between warmth and cold, craft and precision engineering.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine