I’ve always envied those with synesthesia—that sensory, cognitive phenomenon that allows one to see sounds in colors or taste words. This year at Milan Design Week, the Vans immersive installation, Checkered Future: Frequency Manifest, granted this wish, if only for a few incredible moments. In partnership with the celebrated designer Willo Perron—whose studio with Brian Roettinger has realized large scale sets for brands including Chanel, Cartier, and Savage x Fenty, as well as artists like Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Sam Smith—, Vans has converted the Triennale di Milano’s expansive Salone d’Onore into a space of sonic and visual wonder. “We started to think about how we can visualize sound,” Perron says of the project’s genesis. “How do we transform that into a tangible form?”

Upon entry, visitors are invited to lean at about 60 degrees against a metal grated structure. The mirrored panels that form the room’s walls and ceiling tilt and shift, reflecting geometric patterns of light in response to an intricate soundscape by the composer and sound artist Tim Hecker. When the composition strikes the heavenly chords of a church choir, the ceiling tiles ascend, and the lights show in white vertical columns, mimicking the towering architecture of the neighboring Duomo di Milano. As the Hecker’s arrangement becomes industrial and thrillingly sinister, the lights flash red, fog billows from below, and the walls tilt downward, closing in. Euphoric, swelling synths prompt psychedelic rainbow ripples and crystalline lightbeam formations—frequencies not only to be heard but experienced by the whole body.

This feat of sound and design—on view until April 13—is a celebration of the launch of the Old Skool 36 FM, a reimagining of the ubiquitous Old Skool, the first sneaker to feature Vans’s signature sidestripe. The release marks the inaugural offering of Future Make, a platform from OTW by Vans that will create boundary-pushing redesigns of classic Vans styles. “I look at the Future Make platform in the same way that the automobile industry looks at concept cars,” Ian Ginoza, the Global Vice President and Creative Director of Pinnacle Product, explains. “They reimagine a type of legacy and iconic franchises and give a new perspective, a new point of view.” 

Thanks to Warped Tour and the Old Skool-wearing skaters whose garages I frequented for band practice as a teenager, I will forever associate Vans with music. Indeed, music is integral to its DNA, intertwined with its founding skate culture. “It’s at the very center of who we are,” Ginoza comments. “It’s a big part of the life force and heartbeat of Vans, from the early days of Black Flag and Bad Brains.” In a design direction inspired by the New Order song “Ceremony,” the Old Skool 36 FM is a physical representation of this enduring relationship, even featuring debossed soundwave patterns wrapping around the sole and onto the cupsole.

As a continuation of the installation, meant to highlight the power of sound and communal experience, Vans hosted DJ sets by Björk, Vegyn, and Evissimax in the Triennale’s garden on Tuesday night. Echoing the installation’s use of light and reflection, the audience of design week attendees and Milanese locals was framed by a massive mirrored checkerboard that reached several stories tall. As the crowd danced, flashes of movement were reflected back to them: music, light, and audience pulsing as one.