ASICS SportStyle arrives at Milan Design Week with something more deliberate than a product launch. ASICS Kinetic Playscape, open to the public at Garage 21 from April 22 to 24, is a five-part spatial installation built around the GEL-KINETIC 2.0 sneaker and the brand's foundational conviction: that movement, even brief movement, changes the state of the mind.
The installation was conceived by NUOVA, a Los Angeles-based design and research studio founded by Rodrigo Caula and Enrico Pietra, known for spatial storytelling that sits at the intersection of industrial design, craft, and performance. For ASICS Kinetic Playscape, NUOVA constructed an imagined ASICS research institute, retro-futurist in aesthetic and tactile in execution, drawing on Italian radical design and Japanese minimalism in equal measure. Each of the five rooms corresponds to a different state of being, progressing from the weight of the ground underfoot to something considerably lighter.
At the center of it all is the GEL-KINETIC 2.0, developed and tested at the ASICS Institute of Sport Science in Kobe. The silhouette draws on archive references including the GEL-KINETIC 4, GEL-FRANTIC, and GEL-TORNADO series, reinterpreting early 2000s running aesthetics with Scutoid GEL technology for cushioning, a TPU support cage for stability, and a construction built for daily movement rather than performance sport.
Visitors are invited to wear the shoe inside the installation, making the connection between the object and the argument physical rather than theoretical. The premise behind the installation, that 15 minutes and 9 seconds of movement produces measurable positive effects on mental wellbeing, is the same logic that has driven ASICS since its founding. Anima Sana In Corpore Sano. A sound mind in a sound body. Seventy years of the same sentence, now given a room of its own in Milan.
The experience, designed by Los Angeles studio NUOVA, unfolds across five futuristic environments conceived as an imaginary ASICS research institute.
Inside the space, a changing room will allow guests to try on ASICS sneakers, alongside a dedicated area for talks between the designers and one-on-one meetings. A sound system installation curated by Mateo Garcia will also be present throughout.
April 21 will be dedicated to the press preview, from 2:00 to 3:00 PM.
April 22-24, 2026
Garage21 - Via Archimede 26, 2026