Soft power

 

In a week when Milan's design circuit has made total immersion something close to a house style, Škoda Auto's Ooooh, that's EpiQ! manages to stand apart by doing the unexpected: pulling back. Installed within the formal gravity of the Palazzo del Senato, the project—conceived by Ricardo Orts—introduces an inflatable landscape that appears almost casual at first glance: bulbous, brightly colored, faintly reminiscent of modeling clay.

The space unfolds less as a spectacle than as an atmosphere. Visitors drift through it, pausing for coffee or stretching into a morning yoga session, before returning later to find it subtly transformed by light. At its center, the still-camouflaged Škoda Epiq and its sculptural counterpart serve as anchors, though they never fully dominate the scene. Instead, the surrounding forms—rounded, oversized, insistently tactile—carry the experience, encouraging a mode of engagement that is physical rather than directive.

It is, unmistakably, a brand environment, but one that understands the current appetite for participation over display. The installation does not demand attention so much as absorb it, offering a mood rather than a message—something to inhabit briefly, and perhaps remember less as an object than as a sensation.