OBJECTS ARE BY x Grant Levy-Lucero: presented at Milan Design Week (Salone del Mobile)

Milan is a city of secrets. After last year's successful debut at Milan Design Week, to launch its latest collection, OBJECTS ARE BY revealed a secret of its own during Milan Design Week 2025: a secret café designed as an immersive, conceptual space at the intersection of design, architecture, and the ritual of drinking coffee.

The Secret Café was not listed. Entry was invitation-only and once invited you had to register to receive a key which let you in. Its location was concealed, coordinates shared only with those who hold “the key to the city,” a metaphor co-founder Phil America says is Milan’s deeper map: the one defined by community, not signage. In Milan, the best spaces aren’t found. They’re shared.” Through locals and whispered directions, the city slowly reveals itself. Inside this hidden space, the new bone-free porcelain collection was on view, rooted in OBJECTS ARE BY’s commitment to exploring new methods, materials, spaces, and rituals. 

“We wanted to build a moment that feels like something someone would tell you about, not something you’d find on a map,” states Jenny D. Pham, co-founder of OBJECTS ARE BY.

Creating more of its bone-free porcelain, OBJECTS ARE BY released a collaboration with Grant Levy-Lucero, the Los Angeles-based artist whose work merges Californian iconography with clay’s emotional and physical memory. His pieces carry a language of signs which include fruit crate typography, hand-painted motifs, inherited tableware all translated into tactile, timeless forms.

The Secret Café was open on April 8th & 11th, 2025. Access was limited and by invitation only.