On the occasion of Milan Design City, from September 28th to October 10th, four webdocs describe different creative realities and their strength to react and rise again. A project created by Design Resistenza, movement based on the need to share what the design industry experienced during the days of covid emergency.
The first video is dedicated to Superstudio and its undisputed soul, Gisella Borioli.

The Fashion Week just ended in Milan, between phigital events, royal fashion shows and digital fashion shows, more than new clothes (everything is now permissible) has brought another idea of beauty. Identity went on the stage rather than aesthetics: "real" women in place of approved models. Another positive message in the year that inaugurates the decade that already sees many women in the foreground in key positions.

If there is a general observation that I could make after the brave Milan Fashion Week which lined up real, digital, virtual, essential, spectacular, classic, reinvented, filmed fashion shows - all interesting although a little cold unfortunately due to a lack of human warmth kisses initial thoughts and rock applause - it is not so much the variety of all kinds proposals (to what we are used to) but the change of models called to present them. More ethical than aesthetic choice...

In order to continue the Design Encounters we meet the architect Carolina Nisivoccia who gave her feminine mark as art director to the general design project at Superstudio in the first three years of the format evolution from Temporary Museum to Superdesign, from 2015 to 2017. A multiform approach to design, letting imagination run wild and with interventions in fashion, publishing, exhibit design and eco-ethics applied to the project. She has received several awards abroad including the Green Dot Awards in Los Angeles.

How do you remember your Superstudio experience?
"My artistic direction: personalistic, concert, design, rationalistic, mystical, realistic, characteristic, futuristic, acoustic, humanistic, optimistic, hedonistic, component, logistics, plastic, stylistic, aphoristic, characteristic, illuminist, perfectionist, sentimental...Having been the artistic director of Superdesign Show, an event comparable in size and number of exhibitors to a small fair, for me it was not just a creative activity. It was an effort in which the team, and above all Gisella Borioli, has a fundamental role. A three-year cycle in which to test a vision, finding the balance between the coherence to be given to each event, the anticipation of the trends to come and the creation of various initiatives...

WHITE, the contemporary fashion show at Superstudio, promotes the first Fuorisalone of fashion with the events of Milan Loves Italy in collaboration with Interni magazine during Fashion Week. From September 24 to the 27 there will be the first nine events in Milan fashion multibrands together with independent designers and Italian brands.

The MILANO LOVES ITALY movement continues to grow, including, besides National Chamber of Fashion, CBI-The Best Shops, Best Showroom, also the newly formed Alined association, and NIAM Nazionale Italiana Agenti Moda (Italian National Fashion Agents).
To make Milan more vibrant and dynamic during the fashion week, came the idea of involving fashion multibrands and some design spaces to create a circuit of events and presentations to support Italian companies and producing in Italy. The project will be launched - together with WHITE - on Thursday 24 at 12.00 am in Tortona 27 Superstudio Più. The first nine events involving different stores between fashion and design are already scheduled for the September fashion week, from 23 to 27...

I've always thought that women, except for a very few lucky ones, are not given the place they deserve. I have always thought that their disposability and concreteness, combined with other qualities not lacking to capable men and women, could be an added value for those who hold the levers of power in their hands. Without feminist ulterior motives, political judgments or claims of quotas for women, I can only be pleased to see that the pool of women who are now moving the levers of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, Christine Lagarde, Angela Merkel, not to mention those just a step below, they are making human and indispensable decisions, also revising treatises and preconceptions. If something is moving at the top is this the signal that now it's up to women?

I've always thought that creativity has no gender, but that of women also has a special sensitiveness and a boost to decoration of its own.
I have always thought that with so many graduates top of their class in polytechnics and art academies, there's no match in the number of professionals known for their talent...

In the former printing house in via Assab, Milan, where books, art catalogues and encyclopedias were once printed, the art world exploration continues through the many languages in which it is expressed today, thanks to the passion of Elena Quarestani and her team of collaborators always open to new contributions. We recommend the new three-part exhibition 1+1+1/2020 open until November 24th.

For the fourth appointment with 1+1+1 at Assab One, the comparison between different artistic expressions returns, based on a project by Elena Quarestani under the curatorship of Federica Sala. An event outside the circuits, the rules, the market that nevertheless offers a glimpse of important research that invites you to reflect and a corner of the old Milan that is unexpectedly nourished by art. An independent space and a no profit association that moves for the pure pleasure of art, among the first to open after the most acute crisis of the pandemic...

First inter pares in this extraordinary couple at the top of the most aware and advanced world architecture, Doriana, who participated with her husband Massimiliano Fuksas, in the circuit of amazing installations made with marble at Superstudio in 2013, claims the equal role of architects. The studio that husband and wife run as a couple has done great works all over the globe thinking about future cities, but she does not disdain even small-scale creativity, designing original micromosaic jewels in which she brings her strength and her femininity.

2000/2020 In twenty years what has changed, what will change?
In daily banality, design has always been given the very small connotation and, improperly, the very "large" plan to architecture. It seems clear to me that a distinction between architect and designer has been objective for at least a century. Architect and designer deal with very different things. Or at least that seemed to be. Today we have almost reached a creator hybrid figure who goes from large scale to the small one and vice versa...

He is the architect and designer who invented the most iconic and spectacular furniture of recent years, becoming the leader of that eclecticism and that "different" vision that brought design to the border with art. Right from the first exhibitions dedicated to Design, Fabio Novembre arrived at Superstudio with his incredible furnishings within the events curated by Giulio Cappellini. In these twenty years his fame has grown along with his influence in international design, but he always remains the visionary designer who seeks other horizons.

2000/2020 in twenty years what has changed, what will change?  
I have always felt represented by Lavoisier's aphorism: "Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed." And if the father of modern chemistry said so, I don't think there is anything to object to.