When the Italian boutique leather brand Marsèll opened its showroom a year and a half ago on Via Spiga, Milan’s luxury shopping street, it was an exercise in restraint — similar to the shoes and bags on offer, the interior, by Berlin’s Lotto Studio, took a minimal approach to form, with almost all the emphasis on the interplay of high-end natural materials like glass, stone, stainless steel, and walnut. That elegant spareness has made it not only the perfect visual expression of the brand, but also the perfect neutral backdrop against which to stage designer interventions during the Milan furniture fair. Last year Marsèll welcomed Gonzalez Haase AAS into the space, and this year, Objects of Common Interest — the New York– and Athens–based practice of Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis — did the honors, with a two-floor installation called Adaptive Ground that “explores the relationship between space and material.”

Upstairs, in the main part of the store, Trampoukis and Petaloti have strategically placed objects from their repertoire in corners, against walls, and in the windows facing the street, creating a kind of indoor sculpture garden where each inflated-vinyl lamp or tubular abstract form is both an enhancement of its surroundings as well as an opportunity for an individual moment of artistic interaction and reflection. Those tubular forms have recurred throughout the designers’ portfolio over the last few years, but usually in powdercoated metal; here, they’re wrapped entirely in Marsèll’s buttery black leather, a testament to the collaborators’ shared respect for high craftsmanship, but one so quiet and subtle that you have to get close to discover the surprise.

Downstairs, the gesture is bolder, if still characteristically diaphanous: in an all-white mirrored room typically used to showcase Marsèll’s Gomme collection of rubber-soled shoes, Objects of Common Interest have created a new, site-specific installation consisting of two-dozen milky inflatables lashed together with two gigantic leather belts. It’s a ghostly island that’s half meant for displaying shoes and half meant as a mysterious encounter, one the designers have invited shoppers to further contemplate by placing white-leather seat cushions on the stepped displays that flank it. In the universe of the exhibition, you can feel grounded by the monumental, stone-lined space — or the shoes on your feet, as it were — but there’s always an opportunity to experience lightness and release.

PHOTOS BY ALESSANDRO SALETTA