Under Milano

Milan is a city often imagined through its surface the grandeur of its architecture, the refinement of its design, the elegance of its streets. Yet beneath this familiar image lies another world: the Metro. A place of constant movement, inhabited daily by over a million travellers, it is a geography that most pass through without pause, a network that supports the city in the same vernacular while remaining almost invisible to it.

Under Milano – a project created by two photographers Tiziano Demuro and Sergio Raffaele – turns its attention to this hidden dimension. Their project traces the underground life from the physical structure to the way people occupy space, how light and signage create orientation, how routine gestures compose a silent choreography of urban experience. Theirs is not simply a visual catalogue but an exploration of how environment and perception entwine, of how design both frames and is reframed by those who inhabit it.

What emerges is a portrait of Milan that is not monumental but intimate, not static but in flux. The Metro becomes a mirror of the city above: diverse, restless, layered with stories that unfold in fleeting moments between strangers. Under Milano captures these fragments, weaving them into a language that is at once documentary and poetic.

We are drawn to this way of seeing. It resonates with our own conviction that design is not only about form, but about the lived experience it makes possible. Under Milano reminds us that Milan’s identity is as much underground as it is above, a pulse of life moving quietly beneath the surface, shaping the city in ways both subtle and profound. This entry continues our Journal’s pursuit of voices and visions that shift perspective, revealing new dimensions of the everyday and deepening our understanding of the places we call home.

PHOTOS: Tiziano Demuro & Sergio Ra aele (IG: @undermilano)
WORDS: Jay Vosoghi