Experiencing Valletta being Transformed by designMT 2025 and its Creative Pulse – a walkthrough with Elton Micallef
By Shereen Shabnam
Walking through the gates of Auberge d’Aragon as the sun dipped over the limestone ramparts, I felt a peculiar sense of déjà vu, as though Valletta itself were waking into a new skin, one woven by designers, makers, and visionaries. I was there with Elton Micallef CEO of the Malta Crafts Foundation and organisers of designMT, who kindly guided me through the preparations unfolding across multiple iconic Valletta venues. What struck me most was how the city’s weight of history would become the canvas for something decidedly modern.
This year’s iteration of designMT returns bigger and bolder. Exhibitions spread across Auberge d’Aragon, Fortress Builders, the Chapel of Our Lady of Pilar, and the Valletta Design Cluster, each venue chosen for its connection to Valletta’s identity and architecture. As Elton showed me around, I could already sense how each space would converse with the design objects to come, often in harmony with the deco.
A Dialogue Between Past & Present
What sets designMT apart is its insistence that design is not ornamental but narrative. Exhibit pieces are chosen not for novelty alone, but for their ability to marry functionality, style and cultural meaning. In walking through the corridors of the venue, I imagined how designers will respond to the echoes of stone, shadow, and sacred silence. Those architectural bones will frame, highlight, and sometimes challenge the contemporary pieces showcased inside.
Elton pointed out a few names among the over 40 exhibitors this year – names that already feel familiar in Malta’s design scene. Among them: Charles Zammit, a sculptor who specializes in the use of Maltese limestone, Alda Bugeja, a Gozo-based textile artist; Marisa Zarb, who channels engineering into jewellery under the name Peprin®; Charles & Ron – the duo has been shaping Malta’s fashion scene for over 30 years; Nico Conti – a ceramist who specializes in 3-D printing, and Glen Calleja, whose bookbinding and poetic crafts straddle art and object. My favourite fragrance curator, Stephen Cordina is part of the designMT 2025 and I am positive he will draw people of all ages and backgrounds to his setup. Walking past mockups in various rooms, you could tell each exhibitor has taken the venue’s character into account, whether that means soft materials in the Chapel’s quiet halls or bold sculptural forms against the fortress walls.
Themes That Matter
designMT’s ambition extends beyond passive display. The organisers have curated a series of thematic events that allow discourse to emerge around design’s role in contemporary life. Each thematic event is tethered to exhibition venues or partner spaces, culminating in conversations that aim to engage both insiders and curious publics. It’s one thing to see a striking object; it’s another to hear the voices behind it, to understand the intentions, the challenges, the local stories.
Elton led me through narrow corridors, vaulted halls, terraces where scaffolding and lighting rigs were just being set. Watching artisans busy with installations and with feather-light gestures, I felt the power of contrast. The sacred geometry of the Chapel of Our Lady of Pilar set up a tension with provocative contemporary forms. In the Auberge d’Aragon, limestone sculptures seemed to reclaim fortitude and transformation.
Walking among the teams, I sensed an optimism that tradition is not dead weight but fertile soil. designMT 2025 feels less like an exhibition and more like a living experiment: how a small but rich country remaps its identity through form, craft, and dialogue.
As the doors open to the public, I expect Valletta itself to feel transformed with rooms of stone becoming stages for creative voices, streets where tourists once walked become corridors between exhibitions, and design conversations murmuring through cafés, galleries, and bastions.
