How do we design something we cannot see? And how can design give form, meaning and experience to what lies beyond visual perception? These questions are at the heart of the two contributions through which AANT will take part in the DxS Conference 2026, scheduled for 15–16 October in Rome at AMKA Social Hub.
Now in its third edition, the Conference is promoted by the DxS: Design (per) Semiotics study group, which explores the dialogue between design and semiotics through the themes of perception, action and meaning-making. The 2026 edition focuses on the theme The Credible and the Incredible: Architectures of Imagination.
Representing AANT will be Alessandra Reggiani, architect, lighting designer, AANT lecturer and Director of the LuDe – Lighting Design Master’s Programme, and Michelle Damilano, a second-year Design student.
With her presentation “Illuminating the Invisible”, Alessandra Reggiani will explore light as a design medium capable of shaping experience, communication and our relationship with space. Her focus will be on underground environments, where technical, practical, perceptual and sensory aspects intersect in unusual conditions. Here, the immaterial nature of light meets the “invisibility” of space, calling for specific design approaches and a different perspective on the relationship between lighting and perception.
Michelle Damilano approaches the theme from a different perspective with her contribution, “Describing the Invisible: Colour Beyond Sight.” The project emerged during her academic studies from an apparently simple question: how can we describe a colour without referring to visual elements or objects commonly associated with it? This question gave rise to a research project exploring how the experience of colour can be made accessible to blind and visually impaired people through multisensory and narrative tools. Colour is thus taken beyond its exclusively visual dimension and interpreted through textures, temperatures, sounds, emotions and sensory associations.
Two contributions that, from different perspectives and levels of experience, share the same field of inquiry: exploring what design can make perceptible, accessible and meaningful. Because designing also means questioning what we take for granted and finding new languages to make visible and shareable what is not yet so.