Roberto Marcatti is an architect with multiple lives: developer and designer with important partnerships (including Fiorucci and Armani), He took part in Zeus creation, minimal and elegant industrial design, pioneer of Tortona area where he opened the first "outlet" for auteur design, exhibitions curator, books and essays author, and more. The turning point comes with water's value awareness and its suffering. He founds the H2O association which becomes the fulcrum of all his choices. On World Water Day, March 22, we ask him some questions.

On national water day and 15 years after the birth of your H2O Milano association, what's the balance amount of things you have done about this issue?
H2O Milano non-profit association was born by the will of Cintya Concari and mine after the first exhibition held right in Zona Tortona...

We hosted him at Superdesign Show 2018 with his monumental installation "Breath/ng", a great white origami that breathed and purified air. We published him in “Design Super Show” book as one of the most charismatic presences in these 20 years of design at Superstudio. We met Kengo Kuma in a video conference from Tokyo during "Welcome, feeling at work" press presentation, the innovative eco&green building that will be built in Milan.  

Rooftops, lush gardens, vegetable gardens, open-air courtyards, restaurants, lounges, shops, a supermarket, a wellness area and spaces for events and exhibitions. A new residential complex in town? No, offices. 
Precisely the first biophilic office in Milan, a project looking to the future and whose sole purpose it's to make working days more livable, encourage people's well-being in a location in close dialogue with nature...

After the newly launched Green Screen and for GoLive project, at Superstudio Più there's a “theater” on the way, created with an even more performing Ledwall which makes all kinds of events and production in favor of phygital communication possible. The new Superstudio Maxi is also getting ready with a Green Screen and a digital and television “theater” even larger and interacting with each other in real time. Superstudio's r/evolution continues...

As Incredible as it may seem, cinematic special effects have been experimented since the early 1900s through a double shot that can add spectacular backgrounds and performances in a seemingly normal scene. One hundred years later, with digital advent, the ability to recreate virtual worlds in which real people move has become a professional choice of photographers and directors...

A sensational change in our invaded by Covid lives is reaching even the most intimate, personal, entertaining, playful spaces, those where the presence of family and friends is important. Streaming concerts and theatrical performances have already arrived. Even at Sanremo Festival, Irama, a singer quarantined in hotel, participated with his avatar, that is to say him in prior recording. With "iorestoinsala" ("istayintothevenue") format we watch first-run film by choosing our seat at the cinema complete with reserved number but illusion remains there because then you stick to a home screen. The most recent of these digital performances see us in virtual company of other guests participating at streaming-parties, streaming-dinners, streaming-birthdays, streaming-weddings, without moving a step. 
Birthday flowers are sent with WhatsApp, group shots are shared on social networks, gifts are sent via amazon, wedding list is activated online, kisses travel via FaceTime...

Images fill our life. All around cities, landscapes, places we visit, faces of loved ones, those of strangers, screens and TV channels overflow, Facebook, Instagram... A photos kaleidoscope, to remember, capture moments, document facts, tell imaginative places and desires. As in shootings that for forty years photographers, agencies and prestigious brands set in Superstudio 13 spaces, the first hub dedicated to the image, with 13 photographic studios and numerous services. Today there is a great change in the air...

World has changed since 1983, year of Superstudio 13 foundation, a fashion and image citadel that quickly attracted great photography personalities: from the irreverent Oliviero Toscani who revolutionized the way of advertising, to Giovanni Gastel, photography magician that through face captured soul in suspended places...

The discovery of graphic tablet and post-production's endless possibilities was a turning point for Gastel. Under his hands it became magic. Finally he could shape his dreams and transform “pure” photographs into mysterious images like his visions. It was time for art: museums opened their doors to him. His books, about poetry, autobiography, photography, philosophy, followed one another. All creative experiences attracted him. We have shared many of these.

Gastel continued to take beautiful photos more and more requested by fashion greats. Flavio Lucchini, who remained a friend even after he left publishing, had already shifted to art for a while.
The Triennale dedicated, in 1997, a large exhibition to Gastel curated by Germano Celant...

Giovanni Gastel, an extraordinary man, photographer, artist, poet, writer of undisputed greatness, passed away in a moment of Covid. Grandson of the filmmaker Luchino Visconti, from a noble and wealthy family, in order to be a photographer he paid his dues like many others, starting from scratch. It just so happened that the beginning of his career was precisely in Edimoda, publishing house of Donna and Mondo Uomo, revolutionary fashion magazines created by Flavio Lucchini and which in the 80s even outclassed Vogue Italia and L'Uomo Vogue, created right by Lucchini. I ran Donna, and I introduced him to the magical fashion world.

If I think back to my life intertwined with that of Giovanni Gastel, the first memory that comes to my mind is this thin and introverted boy who, selected by Flavio who was the art director, I was given to make Donna's cover by Ferré which Toscani had to do when he left in a sudden fit of temper...

Our daily updated @AT online magazine is also a monthly paper magazine with the most important digital news and some additions and previews.

Print A3 pages and you will have your monthly copy in the original format. Or collect your copy free of charge at Superstudio offices, in via Tortona 27, via Forcella 13 and via Moncucco 35, in Milan. In the archive you will find previous editions, available for printing.

Here you can find the Abstract of March/April @AT paper: we talk about

-FAREWELL TO GIOVANNI GASTEL

-GASTEL GENTLE GENIUS

-AND AFTER VIRTUAL FASHION SHOWS...

cc-tapis reminds me a sort of carpets Jean Paul Gaultier. Fantasy, experimentation, re-invention, break with coventional ideas starting from tradition (which exists but cannot be seen). A trio of friends including a girl of Persian origin, long trips to Nepal, the desire to innovate. A maximum creativity's artists and designers pool. Daniele Lora, architect and art director tells the story of these revolutionary carpets. They look like everything except usual carpets.

A carpet company that in a few years has upset the market's sector. What did this revolution trigger?
The modus operandi which distinguishes us is to always work looking forward and little backward, with consequent problems...