It is a time to reflect on the signs of the times, how we were and what we will be, how we live and where we are going. I think about it all year round, trying to activate my radar and pick up the vibrations. The idea. It takes “the idea” to set in motion the whole creative mechanism that precedes the birth of the Superdesign Show at Superstudio, where nothing happens by chance. The choice of imagining a Temporary Museum was a good one many years ago to begin to change course from the standardized presentations, and then the indications widened: Only The Best, Roots, Time to Colour, Looking Ahead, Inspiration Innovation Imagination, are some of the themes - always appreciated - that year after year have led us to the current Thinking Different. In its name, Superdesign Show, suggests a look towards a design that has gone beyond schemes, customs, conformism, hierarchies, categories, technologies, even dematerialising itself in many cases. The ‘themes of the year’ each time indicated a trend, either just becoming evident or still underground. They suggested a way to stage projects and objects.
Today, at the crossroads between the analogue age and the virtual future, where algorithms and blockchain will direct traffic, the ‘themes of the year’ are the ones that will be the most important and prepare a metaworld made to measure for digitarians, Superstudio adapts and in the great showcase of the Superdesign Show invites participants to Thinking Different. Accepting the challenge that is taking us into a promising or perhaps dangerous tomorrow, but one with which we will still have to interact. Thinking Different! is the imperative proposed and appreciated by exhibitors, planners, designers, artists and technicians who have translated it into projects and visions. You will find avatars answering you, art, fashion and design living in the metaverse, marvelous marble made of pixels, furniture that takes on colour through the viewer, unreal holograms juxtaposed with tangible objects, robots that make chairs before your eyes, reinvented and unimaginable materials, craftsmanship enhanced by augmented reality, utopian projects that anticipate the future. Artificial Intelligence has the task of helping us in our transit towards a new world with memory and secrets stored in the cloud and blockchain.

A competition of generosity, art, design, and beauty. The grand sculptures from the Slide Art collection for those who can dream big. In memory of an enlightened entrepreneur and his love for design and art. In support of the idea of making the cultural landmarks of Milan accessible to everyone. This event, strongly desired and organized by Superstudio, is born from the desire of Marco Colonna Romano to honor his father, Giò Colonna Romano, founder of Slide, who recently passed away, with a public tribute to the collection of works commissioned by him over the years. Supported by a group of friends who are art enthusiasts and identified in the non-profit association MuseoCity, with its inclusive cultural projects, the ultimate recipient of the funds raised. 
  From January 24 to 30, Designer's Dream, an exhibition culminating in a pro bono auction by Christie's on the evening of the 30th, makes available to everyone sixteen extraordinary sculptures created by prominent names in design. These sculptures can enhance representative spaces, hospitable venues, and perhaps the beautiful homes of Milanese residents. One could be for you, dear reader.

For the ninth edition of the prestigious ADD AWARDS, the competition that rewards the best settings and architectures of public and private spaces in a broad design concept in Russia, Gisella Borioli has once again been called to join the international jury. She was chosen for her role as Creative Director of Superdesign Show at Superstudio Più and as the initiator of Milan Design Week, which is now widespread in neighborhoods as it presents itself today.

An epochal exhibition, a designer like no other, a great photographer. That's enough reason not to miss the grand exposition featuring the king of style, Giorgio Armani, and his primary interpreter, Aldo Fallai, joined together to charmingly and imaginatively narrate the gracious fashion that has captivated our dreams for almost fifty years, from 1977 to 2021.

Superstudio Group's commitment to commercial real estate and event management, social objectives, charity and the support of young talents through various non-profit initiatives is confirmed. After the company name ending with S.R.L. today you will also find S.B. for the mission we hold most dear: being useful to society.

We enter Milan Design Week, the most important and sparkling week of the year for our city, with a mix of excitement and uncertainty. The newfound normality of the post-pandemic and the bright prospects of a scientific future clash with the darkness of an increasingly threatening war and its frightening human economic political social consequences. Milan, attractive and forbidding capital of Italian creativity among grandiose building projects and countless small construction sites bringing luxury and green into the the suburbs, continues its mutation. What about design? Into the real world comes the unreal, what until yesterday seemed like pure fantasy. H.T. (Human Technology) is measured by A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) and desires are realized with the help of “tools” that bring into the shadows skills and crafts, to which tomorrow we will give other forms and other names. 

On the occasion of the next edition of MuseoCity which explores how light affects artistic expressions, the FLA, FlavioLucchiniArt Museum at Superstudio Più, invites you to discover thanks to guided tours the stunning works which  tell about, fashion, design and social changes through the vision of Flavio Lucchini, founder and guide of the Superstudio Group but, above all a global artist dedicated full-time to the search for beauty and the interpretation of women's fashion as a metaphor for the contemporary. 

On the one hand, an advanced management school with an international vocation and offices in Bari, Rome, Lecce and Milan. On the other, the organization that produces top-level events and has launched the phenomenon of the Design Districts in Milan. THE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT OF THE LUM UNIVERSITY and SUPERSTUDIO ACADEMY, a new initiative of Superstudio Group, have met to offer students within the Master of Arts and Design Management a course focused on the creation of events and in particular of the Milan Design Week. An opportunity to experience firsthand the most important week of the year and quickly acquire unique skills live.

Round figure for a birthday that sees us on the run despite the world around us being in constant upheaval. No big party to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of Superstudio in Milan but a constant commitment every day to be better, more attentive and on time to create opportunities to offer solutions and quality to those who choose to be part of our creative and professional community as clients, visitors, operators, collaborators or simply friends. With 4 locations in different areas, different specifications and numerous related service companies, with a solid editorial activity and new artistic and cultural projects, the Superstudio group greets the new year and thanks those who have been following us for 40 years and new followers.

A beautiful and visionary initiative desired by Councillor Alessia Cappello of the Municipality of Milan to open up possible future prospects for many girls. With the collaboration of established professionals who generously make their time and experience available in order to identify their talents and direct them in the right way toward the path best suited to their aptitudes. Among the 250 women called to mentor the 500 mentees is Gisella Borioli, who is happy to once again be ready to fly young women toward self-affirmation.

With her book recently published by Rizzoli, Nika Zupanc, Slovenian and one of the most interesting designers of the last decade, has consecrated an unpredictable but consistent path to being a woman, turning male prejudices and symbols of femininity into icons. Which for her rhymes with freedom. Beautiful and proudly feminine, she tried her hand at common objects by treating them in pink, decorating them with bows, hearts, flowers, scallops, and other ironic frivolities while keeping the rigor of design constant in a continuous oxymoron.  The book "Nika Zupanc: Breaking The Rules" chronicles her dazzling career and her eclectic and gently provocative vision. Superstudio witnessed her debut during Design Weeks 2009 and 2010 by welcoming her into its Doll Houses with the elegant and surprising collections that contained them. The excerpt from the interview below (published in our edited book "Design Super Show") was already an inspiring invitation to follow her path. The continuation of the story is in the best bookstores

In a town-state where the major expression of public art are the increasingly more daring and futuristic skyscrapers, in D3-the Design District specifically created to unite a community of architectural firms, furniture showrooms, avant-garde stores, the school of design and various creatives-once a year, in November, sculptures and installations appear everywhere in the neighborhood streets and add meaning to the open vision of the beauty, the new, the talented.

"Creative melting pot between Italian heritage, UAE traditions and international influences..." is how Marangoni, among the best-known and most prestigious expanding fashion and design schools, puts it to introduce itself in Dubai with a new educational institute that aims to enhance creative talents locally and establish new cultural paths. An ambitious and well-modulated program. Giulio Cappellini, the school's consultant and an undisputed personality in design, will attend at the Nov. 9th opening.

An extraordinary innovative product will be presented, by invitation only, at Superstudio 13 on Nov. 14 during Digital Week 2022 in Milan, a must-attend event to stay in tune with the future. It is Twins Hiperrelistic 3D Content DSolutions, a cutting-edge 3D technology that enables the creation of hyperralistic "twins" capable of interacting in the physical and digital worlds.

Digital printing itself was a revolution which permitted us to print on any type of records with the same visual effecacy as paper and with no project limits. Agencies and creatives who are looking for classic or alternative solutions to offer their clients new languages ​​and new materials are well aware of this.

It would be quite appropriate to exclaim thus upon discovering in a public presentation by the Milan's Mayor and Aldermen how the city outlines for 2030, when it seems that the air is going to be clean and traffic cancelled, parks are going to be widespread, housing is affordable, schools restored, public transportation electric, when citizen safety is going to be guaranteed, sports are going to be diffused, culture is going to be everywhere, etc. etc. in the 9 municipalities and 20 downtown areas, happy islands where everything works perfectly. 

"We wanted to meet you to let you know and, I hope, appreciate the level of responsibility we have faced these not easy period we are living, especially because this city has all the skills to get out of these difficult moments and to be confirmed as the big international city that it is... A city polycentric, responsible, attractive". With these words, the Mayor of Milan Beppe Sala introduces from the stage of the restored Teatro Lirico, the meeting "Milan grows Milan helps" aimed at journalists, councilors, representatives of change and presents the thirteen councilors who are taking part in the city's regeneration project.

Without going into the merits and judgment of the hosted parties, Superstudio has accepted the request to present the agendas of the Third Pole, with leaders Carlo Calenda of Azione and Matteo Renzi of Italia Viva, on Sept. 2 from 6 p.m.The September 25th polls, born out of the mess of the composition of the last government and the sudden and unexpected fall of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, until a moment before the savior of the country and a representative esteemed by all (or almost all) of the Italian and international community left Italians in bewilderment and uncertainty.

I am proud to have known - and called to collaborate with me to my Donna magazine - Giulio Cappellini since the 80s. A friendship and a long-lasting creative relationship that has also been very important for Superstudio and the launch of the Design Week diffused over the Tortona District, also thanks to his courage and intuitions. Architect, art-director, designer, talent-scout, trend-setter esteemed in the international field, besides being a professional and exquisite man, he has just received the greatest Italian award in design that is the Compasso d’Oro for his career. Nothing more deserved...

With his long view and his sensitivity, at the first visit of what General Electric in March 2000, a factory just emptied and delabrée, a young Giulio Cappellini immediately understood that this space could host the headquarters of a revolution in the world of design and its representation. A month before the Salone del Mobile at the Fair of that year, he...

This year's Design Week ended with a general feeling of satisfaction and Milan took back on its renew role as the design capital of today and tomorrow. Here's where the mind is already thinking about the next edition, with less than a year to go. Nine months is the right time to issue another appointment with a thousand voices imagining a new world. And a number of things can be already gleaned from the "numbers" of the just finished edition...

 Milan is back in its role as the design capital of today and tomorrow, and our eye is already turned toward the 2023 edition. There are only nine months left to make up yet another meeting of a thousand voices imagining a new world. If the one just concluded was the edition of the LOOKING AHEAD”, the next will be “………” 

Today is the war in Ukraine, with its mothers, grandmothers, children evacuated and suddenly thrown into a completely different reality, with only ruins behind them. Yesterday it were the homeless struggling with the pandemic to which we donated 12,000 hard-to-find masks through the Municipality. And again it was the Afghan women, helped to free themselves from the yoke, as much as possible, through the chat ledonnexledonne and the fundraising at Superstudio Più...

Tomorrow it will be other disadvantaged categories: autistic kids, isolated women, women who have been hit in body and soul through the non-profit activities of theFlavioLucchiniArt Museum. The world is continuously wounded. Helping it has become a duty that we gladly fulfill.Tommaso (Borioli, Ceo Superstudio Events), the young nephew who has been working with me for several years in managing the Superstudio also through subsidiaries companies controlled by him, is moving with the turbo towards the future...

In her most recent book Design Super Show, Gisella Borioli describes how she turned Superstudio into the forefront of contemporary design trends, by following it throughout their evolution. In person, she discusses pre and post-pandemic design and how the pandemic compelled many to rethink their way to approach design...

If someone had asked me two years ago, "where is design going?", I would probably have answered differently. I would have mentioned a frantic, eclectic, fun, trendy, using basic and essential furniture version, designed by renowned architects (like Lissoni, Jasper Morrison, for instance). As well, sided by other designers who stood against the current on the edge of kitsch (think of Philip Starck's dwarfs for Kartell), antropomorphic (like the Nemo chair by Fabio Novembre for Driade), animal-like (Mooi's horse lamp, Stefano Giovannoni's monkey lamp), ironic and iconoclastic objects (Mendini's Proust chair for Cappellini)...

The editorial I wrote for AT two years ago, on 23 March 2020, in the grip of the pandemic and concerned with other dark omens, revealed all the worries raised by the beginning of the new millennium. Today, I shiver when reading it: the dangers outlined in that same article are still present and without remedy. Although we made a lot of progress with anti-COVID vaccination, the skepticism of many contributed to keeping the virus alive. Moreover, against the global backdrop, imbued with concern on many levels, the economy has taken on a central role in our lives. There is still a long way to go before recovery, adversely affecting our work, growth, activities, reconstruction, and social life...

“With caution and optimism” was the title of my editorial published in the latest paper-based version of At magazine. It was December, just before the fourth wave began. However, the diminishing Autumnal data gave us genuine hope that the pandemic would have a positive outcome.

Over the months, Superstudio has never failed to be cautious, sticking to the the anti-contagion rules that the authorities have announced for the few events (with medical devices for immediate swabs and large distanced areas) that the decrees let us still host, just a few shooting and some private companies meeting...

2002/2022. Twenty years of the White Show, from a small corner in the Fair in 2001 to the most influential and international independent contemporary fashion show that has reached the goal of more than 500 quality exhibitors. Each time an event not to be missed for the high rate of creativity and that has been able to expand exponentially keeping an eye on the "signs of the time". Let's go over, together with Massimiliano Bizzi, its brilliant inventor, this adventure that took off from Superstudio...

1. How did White become White?
White was born almost by chance, but it is no coincidence that it has become the most important reference show for womenswear in Europe...

Three women – three versatile journalists – put into writing the history of the legendary Fuorisalone in three similar but different books. Through the memories, the images and the contributions of the protagonists, Gilda Bojardi Gisella Borioli and Roberta Mutti illustrate (each in her own way) the changes in Milan when design disseminated as a popular, fun and imaginative art form in the heart of the city. Milan has thus become the world's design capital: unique, much imitated, but never equalled...

There is no doubt that Fuorisalone is closely related to the creativity, the initiatives, and the risk-taking attitude of a bunch of Milanese women who started a game that in the end became harder than any initial predictions...

Milan Design Week 2022 aims to restore the city's role as the European Capital of Design. The event will raise the profile of Milanese genius loci and include international creative movements, former emerging countries and current global leaders. Superstudio has followed this path since it began its activity and this year has seen its location grow. Two Milanese places will host the Superdesign Show 2022: the "classic" Superstudio Più in Via Tortona 27 and the brand-new Superstudio Maxi in via Moncucco 35. For the Superdesign Show 2022, two distinctly different and synergistic projects have been conceived: LOOKING AHEAD at Superstudio Più and DNA.DESIGNNATUREARCHITECTURE at Superstudio Maxi...

Superstudio Più: where trends were born...

The street-artist TvBoy (alias Salvatore Benintende) presents an exhibition at Mudec that traces his artistic journey from the streets to the museums with icons of media personalities and even former enemies who ended up as friends. As Mudec and many publications did, we are pleased to present his exhibition. Despite the enthusiasm, we owe it to our readers to make it clear that this is not his first show: his "first time" in an art-space was in 2010 at the Art Point at Superstudio Più with Mash Up. After 11 years, it was good to see him again in via Tortona...

As a result of launching the My Own Gallery concept gallery at the entrance of Superstudio Più, the ArtBox display case in Via Tortona, and the ArtPoint event hall for the first time, Superstudio Più opened its doors in 2006 to semi-unknown artists, original artistic languages, and creative fusions of all kinds, while offering free...

December holidays are just around the corner and Superstudio is ready to welcome them with joy in its three all-inclusive locations prepared for the occasion. The organization is designed to guarantee its guests the best conditions of splendor and safety possible...

While we were all preparing for a "lighter" autumn after many difficult months, ready to leave our holes and return to offices, shops, clubs, events – encouraged by decreasing infections index and hospitals getting closer to standard levels – the untrustworthy Covid white and red mass – seemingly looking like a harmless cartoon drawing, yet being an invisible enemy causing harmful consequences all around the world – kept creating panic and destruction. Suddenly, the health situation started to scare us again, also due to the many blah, blah, blah of unqualified television personalities, crowds of No Vax No Mask No Pass No Everything, while at least vaccinations...

A temporary "house" for Italian entrepreneurs visiting ExpoDubai2020. Where to explore business possibilities, fasten new relationships, organize confidential and convivial dinners for the entire period of the great universal exhibition. At the Hotel InterContinental in Dubai Marina a magnificent Penthouse that speaks Italian between art and design awaits you.

An intelligent and sophisticated project has been installed in the many rooms of Penthouse number 3801 of the InterContinental Hotel in Dubai Marina. Created by the Polytechnic and Polytechnic Foundation Milan with Lombardy Region, it has transformed every space into a room or a living room where you can accommodate "at home" with the warmth and refinement of Italian hospitality new contacts and exploring new possibilities...

Last night at the inauguration of the Italian Pavilion of ExpoDubai2020 among all the "authors" I was there to celebrate this large space without walls and full of meanings: beauty combined with technology, sustainability with craftsmanship, married recycling to architecture, the memory of the past with the eyes of the future. It is no coincidence that on the first day it was the most visited and immediately awarded pavilion.

Meanwhile: the ExpoDubai area is immense, 4.38 square km, the largest ever built, and 198 exhibitors, the highest number of nations ever seen. The space stolen from the desert and built in a few years brings imposing buildings, imaginative structures, plays of shadow and light obtained with the famous...

Is there another way to think about a collection, a fashion show? Yes, if the brand is led by the pair of young and open-minded creatives Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina, with an idea of ​​360 ° creativity that follows the fluid rules of today's society.

With the courageous choice to inaugurate the immense peripheral industrial space of Superstudio Maxi at the fashion shows, with the idea of ​​overturning the rules by putting the catwalk indoors, inside a mysterious tunnel and leaving out, in sight but in the dark, backstage and technical services, with the challenge of keeping the public standing and putting them on the catwalk in a long line in front of the models, the Sunnei spring/summer 2021 collection has staged its conception of...

An out of date Milan Design Week that began amidst difficulties and ended with everyone's satisfaction. Thanks to the cohesion of design world and the desire to return dreaming beautiful things and live better. The large number of visitors at the Fair and in the city was the best response to the challenge.

Over 60,000 visitors at supersalone Rho exhibition centre, 35,000 at the Triennale, 30,000 at Superstudio Più are important numbers that tell more than many words. They are a very positive response to those who strongly wanted this extra edition of Salone and Fuorisalone to remind the whole world about the strength and attractiveness of Italian design and its international capital, Milan...

Flavio Lucchini, visionary and innovator as entrepreneur, art director, editor, architect, artist has tried everything, successfully, tying his name to the creation of the most important fashion magazines and Superstudio itself, of which he is founder and designer. 

Yes,… fashion. He loves it so much to make it eternal through grandiose works, different from each other, witnesses of an era. He quitted printed paper for the sake of art, to which he dedicated himself in the last thirty years. Divine, the great golden sculpture at the entrance is a symbol of beauty, genius, planning, the art of making. The four pearlescent Ghosts, whose bodies seems to have flown away, tell the essence of the dress and its mastery. The cheerful Dolls are pop works smiling at girls not yet women, naive and provocative together. These are just a few of the hundreds of works made in his atelier. The inauguration of the FLAVIOLUCCHINIART MUSEUM is currently in Via Tortona 27 in a building of Superstudio Più.

You often come across an object, an atmosphere, a thing that you are not able to define as it goes out of the traditional canons. However, it hybridizes different sources of inspiration, offering innovative experiences and introducing unexpected visual languages. Here is where neologisms, made-up definitions, crasis of letters and words, manipulated anglicisms, mergers and phonetic games that draw from the dictionary come into action. Here, neologisms are a divertissement centred on design language that makes you thinking about mixologies that have enriched the domestic and urban landscape. Anyway, how to define them is a personal choice. Neologisms taken from the book DESIGN SUPER SHOW, Superstudio edition 2021. (to request it: info@superstudiogroup.com, amazon.it)...

The long awaited moment is approaching: on September 5th, the third Superstudio’s hub, Superstudio Maxi, will be inaugurated with an open days of five days. This is the biggest exhibition hall of the city, fully sustainable, obtained without land consumption from the regeneration of an old steel factory degraded for years that today turns into a cultural space that looks to the future.

After closing the construction site, laying the large outdoor sculpture - which is the symbol of beauty and creativity - receiving the well-deserved LEED Gold® certificate - that attests to its highest degree of sustainability – testing the system, furnishing work environments, laying the asphalt, finishing the fence and the long electric gate, posing the insigna, planting the trees and creating a garden that is ideally connected to the neighboring park, Superstudio Maxi is finally ready to use...

Months of silence, yes-maybe-no-well yes weeks. The Salone Del Mobile special light edition is confirmed from September 5 to 10 and design starts again together with city’s economy. But let's not forget the Fuorisalone, at the forefront livening up Milan.

A support and hope machine has been set in motion, that’s good news. 
The great possible void left by Salone, which first suggested a "recovery" edition in September after two missed appointments in April 2020 and 2021 and then wavered for long weeks, will be filled up.
New format, new ideas, well-known curator/s, collective thematic exhibitions, simplified set-ups, probably lighter costs, more inclusive spaces are already on the way. Precisely the project on which Superstudio has already been working for some time for its Superdesign Show Special Edition. A coincidence that reassures us...

Salone and the associated Fuorisalone, moved to September, seemed a certainty, thanks to the improved health situation and Fairs opening. But no. The Salone hangs in the balance. And what about Fuorisalone? Maybe it’s time to strengthen Design in the City, regardless of the Fair. Even with a new name to emphasize a new identity.

Almost every day a fluctuating statement on destinies of the Salone del Mobile in Milan, traditionally in April, which due to the pandemic has already "skipped" two editions, 2020 and 2021, assuming (until yesterday) a certain recovery this coming September from 5 to 10. A date painfully achieved by the dialogue between Federarredo and Cosmit, Salone del Mobile organising bodies, with Draghi Government which had to ensure the certain opening of Fairs prior to that date and with the willingness of the most important companies to be present in the renaissance Fair...

Despite the feeling of uncertainty among some business operators and the long wait for a statement by the Salone del Mobile, Design's Fuorisalone, the most important communication and creativity event that has created MILAN DESIGN WEEK and distinguished Milan for more than twenty years, in 2021 will take place. Promoters' leading group has already confirmed its intention to start again with a special edition in September. Superstudio, pioneer and founder of Design "movement" widespread in the Districts, increases its exhibition venues and confirms its commitment. Its Superdesign Show will be there in September. With R/evolution, the general title for an edition that will look far through different projects. With R/evolution, the general title for an edition that will look far through different projects. 

It's a known fact that discerning consumers prefer iconic, designer products able to excite. A trend that today involves everything and everyone. Brushing your teeth with Starck, cooking with Urquiola or Konstantin Grcic, wearing Jean Nouvel or Kartell, traveling with Marcel Wanders or Giovannoni represents the latest design act for everyone.

Until yesterday fashion, or rather fashion designer, was a magic word capable of giving added value and consumer-appeal to many different things, luxury or mass-market products, branded beyond belief and, for this reason, entered the international style circuit...

Fashion winds discreetly among design avenues. Considered by some to be a minus, by others a plus. Totally ignoring judgment, fashion with its trends joins living choices, surfaces colors, coverings textures, interventions on shapes.
Fashion and design face market developments and changes together, adapting to the new needs that 2020 has highlighted even more. That's how Fashion responds.

TECHNOLOGICAL FASHION
Technology acceleration is ready to influence, distorting it, the next millennium also with regard to fashion. Fabrics will play a leading role...

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...

Camera della Moda (Chamber of Fashion) had announced the exceptional effort of the entire fashion sector for this February appointment with Milan Fashion Week. And so it was. A busy week, with a number of appearances, including fashion shows and presentations, nothing to envy to "usual" fashion shows, those that lay down the law and business in happy times when the word pandemic was not part of common language. Seven days of elegance and extravagance in response to a single question: what about tomorrow?

So virtual catwalks, walk-in between buildings and monuments, empty theaters, light runways in the dark, visionary sets, country views, comforting apartments, stunning environments, graphic interventions were the virtual frame of fall/winter 2021/22 fashion. With Italian fashion superstars, international brands, reassuring classics, contemporaries, the emergent ones, transgressive, fashion "niches", accessories. All freely combined, one behind another. A free and varied panorama, an open and punctual evidence between new-classic and provocation, between strict-chic and street-mix...

The memory of a man, athlete, artist, fashion designer, a friend who passed away eight years ago but it seems like yesterday. He created an eternal, timeless fashion which time makes even more desirable.

Ottavio Missoni would have turned 100 on February 11th. For friends, for those who have known him, he’ll remain forever a young athlete who made it to Olympics, an artist who knew how to obtain exciting mix-and-match from wool as beautiful as tapestries and fabrics, a sportsman for life, an open minded man who, even well advanced in years, captured people with his charm and vitality. But also an entrepreneur surrounded by children, grandchildren and friends, who lived with his wife Rosita in a countryside garden-house and from there created his fashion and his legend. For those who have not known him, for the younger ones, the Ma*Ga museum in Gallarate paid him homage by celebrating his centenary with a new set-up by Luca Missoni and Angelo Jelmini of "Sala Arazzi Ottavio Missoni"...

We are already in February and the year of the magnificent twenty years of Superstudio Più is already over, sadly closed to events. Including our birthday party. From 2000 to 2020 time was spent in a breath, with the end of a year to forget. We hope to celebrate the return to normality in 2021, with a finished pandemic, with new initiatives and new hopes.

We could not imagine, Flavio and I, that day back in 1999 when, looking for 1000/1500 square meters to set up a new larger art atelier for him and for me a studio suitable for television footage that would complete first Superstudio in via Forcella 13 photographic studios proposal, we came across a large Gabetti sign, in via Tortona 27: factory building of 17.000 sqm for sale.

From trials of street-artists caught in the act of committing "crime", to urban art that has became the essential ingredient to make cities attractive and suburbs tasty. Milan once again as "movement" leader aiming to increase art on the walls, in the gardens, in the squares. Everything began fifteen years ago. I was there.

I remember when, in 2006, the then newly elected mayor Letizia Moratti called me to join Milan Strategic Committee in order to give suggestions on creativity still dormant in my city, one of the first things I tried my hand at was an attempt to clear street artists from undesirable ghetto to the real artists one, such as many were, making the difference between vandals/taggers and guys who expressed dreams and drawings with murals, often ennobling degraded walls...

In this book wanted for love by Franco Marabelli, friend-collaborator right from the first hour, there is the whole man, his life, his history, his ideas, his world told by a hundred friends. A world that represents the beginning of fashion and modernity. Caro Elio, edited by Franco Marabelli, published by Rizzoli, is already in the bookstore.

Finally I received the magnificent book on Fiorucci by Franco Marabelli, brilliantly laid out by Pier Paolo Pitacco, with the collaboration of Franca Soncini. And it was like going back, in a moment I was among friends of the 60s/70s/80s catapulted by a time machine able to bring back emotions, challenges, fun, the energy of years that to tell them today we hardly believed it. Relationship, meetings, faces, people, eccentric personalities, visionaries...

The media terrorism accompanying the pandemic sometimes suggests extreme solutions to avoid coronavirus infection, without remembering that this infinitesimal, treacherous virus knows how to find a thousand opportunities to infiltrate into our body and infect us, with a more or less frightening viral load.
In this scenario, the last resort of Contactless, not touching anything or anyone, seems to be an increasingly practicable way confronted with many solutions that creativity proposes. Well.
Instead of leafing through communitarian newspapers and magazines, with the dangerous gesture of wetting one’s finger, digital editions on your own device or computer shall be used. Be careful to sign: either e-signatures and if not woe to use the kindly offered ballpoint pen, one never knows, therefore all provided of personal pen...

Eight stories, eight projects, eight womens. “I Fiori della Materia” is the collective exhibition part of “In Women’s Hands” the Superstudio’s programme which combines professional designers attentive to material and their processing. An in-depth study of their research, passion and creative power but also choices, paths and challenges they have faced in life. On show until October 29 to discover female creativity, including unconventional works and unpublished stories. Focus on Ilaria Marelli.

"Now that I think about it...'getting your hands in' as it happens in the artworks on display production, it’s perhaps a bond with my mother..."

Eight stories, eight projects, eight womens. “I Fiori della Materia” is the collective exhibition part of “In Women’s Hands” the Superstudio’s programme which combines professional designers attentive to material and their processing. An in-depth study of their research, passion and creative power but also choices, paths and challenges they have faced in life. On show until October 29 to discover female creativity, including unconventional works and unpublished stories.
Focus on Vera Belikova.

"I come from Russia which has a Soviet mosaic great heritage and my father made some of them..."

MIA, the great Milanese appointment with art photography celebrates 10 years, changing exhibition location and re-launching its New-Post Photography contest attentive to the most innovative contemporary photography trends. All the next-generation artists, but not only, are requested to answer the call.

Following the success of the 1st Award Edition, MIA Fair announces the 2nd Edition of the New Post-Photography Award on the occasion of the next edition in March 2021, which aims to promote the new languages of a photography capable of dealing with contemporary world in an innovative way and addressed to all artists, without any restrictions of age and nationality, who work with the medium of photography. Winners will have the opportunity to exhibit free of charge during the tenth edition of MIA Fair (from 24 to 28 March 2021), at SUPERSTUDIO MAXI in via Moncucco 30, Milan, in an exhibition dedicated to the "New-Post Photography" II Edition Prize...

Eight stories, eight projects, eight womens. “I Fiori della Materia” is the collective exhibition part of “In Women’s Hands” the Superstudio’s programme which combines professional designers attentive to material and their processing. An in-depth study of their research, passion and creative power but also choices, paths and challenges they have faced in life. On show until October 29 to discover female creativity, including unconventional works and unpublished stories.
Focus on Elena Salmistraro

"Among my creations there are some objects which have no practical function but actually, from my point of view, perform the complicated task of nourishing the soul, to excite, to improve our life quality. What is relevant is that object transmits the delicate poetry which inspired him."
Meanwhile Elena looks like this, with intense eyes and a big smile so that you immediately understand she hides a determined and smart person...

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...

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. 

Breathing fabrics, air-purifying paints, tiles that kill bacteria, recyclable polymers, glass that repairs itself, bikinis that clean the sea, energy-generating tires, fabrics that light up and others that regulate body temperature , “circular” ecoplastics derived from orange or tomato peels… the endless search for new materials with unthinkable performances seems to be the key to every innovation. To the point that, through a direct line with operators, the international Material ConneXion network was born in America in 1997 with its very rich library. Just arrived in Italy it also created a “Materials Village” during the Milan Design Week for the last five editions at Superstudio. Emilio Genovesi, CEO of Materially and, first, of Material ConneXion Italia, tells us about it.

Material ConneXion, with its library of materials, with its presentations first at the Triennale and then at Superstudio, also represented in Italy an important step in the knowledge and enhancement of materials for architecture and design. How did it become part of the Salone and Fuorisalone circuit?
Traditionally, Material ConneXion's mission has always been to suggest new and original material solutions to product manufacturers or architectural designers. Obviously doing this has always led to a close relationship with materials manufacturers, especially those who bring innovative solutions...

Forget the annus horribilis that has haunted us so far and, like the kids coming back to school, consider September the beginning of a new cycle of our life and our work.

Perhaps only this attitude can give us a positive restart, aware that among the many risks that we run every day since we were born, there is also this, the evil Covid-19, and we must live with it. Let us therefore enter the next few months with optimism, hope, awareness, as if it were another year, another decade, another century, another future where nothing will be as it was before and many broken pieces may, perhaps, fall into place...

@AT and all of us at Superstudio take two weeks of well-deserved break from the problems of all kinds that this terrible year has thrown on us. In fact, even if we are physically distant from our Milan, the thought will be constantly connected with the improvements, changes, investments that we continue to make on our venues and for our activities, trusting with optimism in a recovery that allows us to start from where we were left. In order not to lose sight @AT remains available online in all its parts and comes back on paper and digital versions at the beginning of September.

Despite the never-ending health emergency, the closed pubs, the empty hotels, the journeys under observation, the contradictory numbers that you don't know if they must scare us or calm us, the wait for the miraculous vaccine that still doesn't exist, the economic downturn that has affected companies of all sizes, despite everything, we want to be optimistic. Let us try to look at our home by picking up those first movements that indicate that the path goes forward, as we wish you all...

The Promenade of Porto Cervo for some years has a focal point that has brought a light of originality among the luxurious and somewhat discounted global brands that dot it. The shop of Rossana Orlandi, talent-scout known for her choices of eccentric limited edition objects poised between art design, in summertime does an encore in the Sardinian small harbour of the success of that of Milan, located a short distance from Superstudio. And at the same time she experiments with democratic Design with a new unexpected collaboration...

In a summer that starts slowly, every sign of vitality becomes a symbol of recovery: trade, hospitality, entertainment. So seeing a van unloading new design pieces, lamps and plates, out of the ordinary furniture and accessories, all desirable, becomes an event even in the square with painted walls that houses the gallery on three floors of Rossana Orlandi. She is there, dressed in white, who directs the operations with determination as if she were in the middle of the design week...

Among top Italian artists who have reached important international goals with their monumental art works there is of course Maria Cristina Carlini, rare feminine presence in a masculine world: she brings out the soul from iron, soil, logs, shaping with her hands majestic ancestral sculptures that dialogue by contrast with contemporaneity. Her artistic presence starts in the 70’s, from California, leaving a mark in America, Asia, Europe, in squares and museums, until “the new city that grows”, which becomes a symbol of the Expo in Milan. At Superstudio, in 2013 she experimented the interaction between art and design. Her last exhibition “Geologie, memorie della terra” is set up in the former Church of San Sisto in Milan until 8th September side by side with the art work by Francesco Messina. The “strength” of a dedicated woman talks more than a thousand words.

What “strength” made a woman artist establish herself in a field so controlled by men such as monumental sculpture?
The “strength” lies in the need to express myself, in the desire to create an art work, an impulse that I can ignore and that most of the times drives me to create monumental sculptures...

After the experiment of the Digital Fashion Week in July in Milan, with controversial results, here are the first signs launched by the "daring" to bring fashion back to the center with phygital mode (physical and digital) for fashion shows and fairs that have always been our strong point capable of igniting interest, desire, business, relationships, trends. The hottest fashion show ever, White Show in September, at Superstudio Più will be there. With a totally renewed edition full of surprises.

In a moment of great uncertainty, the games are played day by day, trying to precede the times and send signs of optimism to obligatorily take us towards a way out of the long economic lockdown that is straining the fashion system. Massimiliano Bizzi, founder and creative director of White, the research fair that in twenty years of new ideas and successes has become the international focal point of research fashion, with more than 500 exhibitors spread over the Fashion District created in via Tortona, it is not going to give up on the challenge of relaunching...

Multimedia artist and visual designer, an innovator who eludes classifications, sought-after by the big fashion brands as well as by the worldwide museums and international universities, Felice Limosani is a no limits creative , able to see beyond and put beauty in a futuristic scenario. He says: "My personal direction is neo-Renaissance made of humanistic values, craftsmanship and technology, creativity and originality. For me, design is Italian: we have always been the country that generates quality, beauty and intuition capable of improving life and its daily taste."

You were among the first creatives to reinvent the "story" of the products with real unprecedented performances between art and technology. How did this professional choice come about?
I am a self-taught, no university or professional school. I made my debut as a DJ in the 80s and 90s, training myself with the poetry of remix. For 20 years I loved music and the night while during the day I used to read (and still do) for passion of sociology and technology essays with a humanistic orientation...

Once the first Digital Fashion Week was over, the feeling was that Covid made a further victim: the fashion system. And all that goes with it. A reflection in cold blood on a half-successful event and on how to bring back the fashion trend.  

With great sorrow, I witnessed the last inexistent Milan Fashion Week of June, moved to July, spent among virtual attempts, calls on the web, mega-screens in the deserted city, digitalized presentations, the “missing” White, the most brilliant fair, with its experiments of Street Market and addressing eco-fashion and Fashion Revolution and its innovative men fashion proposals. An empty Tortona district, which used to be buzzing with fashion shows, events, hot show-rooms, restaurants full of creatives, for the sadness of residents and regulars. And the rest of the city, of course...

An intimist architect that seem to cover the periods favouring less striking, more subdued projects.  Emanuel Gargano was born in Assis where he still has his atelier today. He graduates in Urbino and moves with his studio to London where he collaborates with architect Claudio Silvestrin. His great love for natural elements and simplicity, in spite of his several international experiences and many awards. In his luminous proposals he instils the antique soul of things and magically transforms them into very modern, surprising and mysterious objects.  

The poles of your work and life roam among Assisi, London, New York. What do you “take” from such different places?
This little village where I was born, in the centre of Italy, located on top of a green little hill, has always been the source of great emotions and mysteries for me; it is completely built with a single type of soberly light pink stone, one single piece carved in a block of stone. The strictly medieval nucleus releases an emotionally captivating primordial energy that is difficult to explain.  Even though my studio is in London and the city I love is New York, I never felt so overwhelmed from such monochromatic, light and secret monumentality as in Assisi...

A pop-up operation feeds new life and arouses interest in beautiful houses-museums in the area of Bergamo under the initiative of DimoreDesign. Within old walls, breakaway elements such as furniture by top Italian designers make an appearance. A temporary operation that, in addition to on site visits, deserves a book. In progress.

I always thought about the fascination of contrasts, about cultural richness of comparison, even how much antique feeds the new (yet the “old” are a fundamental support for the young), about the correspondences among creative thoughts originating from either close or distant countries, times and cultures. 
The great initiative “Designers for Bergamo” shows in a plastic and immediate way how beauty integrates with other beauty, even though according to orthodox thought it may seem not to match at all.  Of course, this is no longer true today. The most beautiful houses in the world gathers passionate pieces and leave pre-set “styles” combining antique to contemporary, memory to experimentation, personality-design to avant-garde art, in a sort of in-progress collecting that tells a lot about who chooses and uses it...

He is the most well-known Dutch designer leader of that neo-humanism of the 21st century that opens to all experiences and splendours. Among the first ones to arrive at Superstudio twenty years ago, in a little inconspicuous space where he soon drew attention. His spectacular installations for Moooi, of which he is co-founder, and for the most important Italian and International companies, soon became an unmissable appointment of the Design Week of Milan. 

In the past 20 years what do you think has changed in design?
I think that design has not changed. In the last years it has been influenced a lot by ecology and the communication has become very different, from media to ways of describing stories. Design has become more personal and technological, but its nature is always the same. 

With a pragmatic and against the tide vision and without being too seduced by the futuristic hypotheses of virtual stores entrusted to digital and distance, Beppe Angiolini, ambassador of beauty through his flagship store in Arezzo, takes stock of the fashion system today and tomorrow. Without forgetting the past. An authoritative point of view, in his role as Director of Communication of the Italian Chamber of Buyers. 

According to today’s opinions, on media, on webinars, the “fashion shop”, as we know it today, tomorrow will not work anymore. What do you think about this?
If the fashion shop will not work anymore it will certainly not be due to the introduction of multimedia systems and devices inside it. If this won’t work it will be due to the economical crisis that will not allow it and because anyone working for the shop itself, as sales assistant and/or buyer will not be able to interpret the emotional change that this moment has brought mainly to the final consumer’s choices...

Such a strong love for wood and natural elements, the respect for the environment, for tradition combined to cutting-edge contemporaneity   characterizes the work by Michele De Lucchi and his cross-disciplinary “circle” of designers, innovators, humanists, futurologists with whom he creates buildings, museums, interiors, design, little sculptures, urban development or highly complex projects.  He was part of the Sottsass group at the beginning of Memphis. Today, he is probably the most important and sought-after protagonist of Milan that changes. 

2000/2020 In twenty years what has changed, what will change?
Since the beginning of the new millennium the digital wave has changed the way to approach the most varied day-to-day reality and work, creating huge potentialities that are in continuous development. There are platforms that promote the “download design”, systems of quick prototyping, 3D printers and top technology CNC machines. In addition, it is getting easier to photograph, film, and write and new ways of narration are developing mixing all this expressive tools combined with digital supports. Given the quick progression it is now possible to talk about new design freedom, but the ability to detect new uses for the available technological potential is also required.

His refined, essential, style with a strong recognisable visual identity, is perhaps the key to a success that involves various design fields at International level also thanks to two studios in Milan and New York. He has been among the first architects to be part of the “band” of young designers that Giulio Cappellini gathered around himself for the first exhibitions at Superstudio since the beginning of the millennium. Unforgettable experiences for us, and for him.  

 2000/2020 what has changed and what will change?
Everything has changed and nothing has changed. Perhaps we got better, faster and we have gained awareness at doing things.

Has there been a popularization of design?
I think so but not so much as standardization, according to classic parameters. I think that design has become bigger as intellectual model. Twenty years ago it was already “conformed” enough to talk about design, now even more. More people are getting closer to this universe, and it wasn’t simply due to the arrival of large chains which sold or are selling the so-called democratic design but simply design has become more interesting, wider...

14/17 July 2020 is a turning point event: the first digital fashion week that could lead  the way for the fashion shows of the future is born, with interactions among physical and virtual and audience all over the world. Top brands, Camera Moda and Superstudio are ready. 

Phase 3 of the post-coronavirus opens, bringing along lots of good intentions. Among these, some outstanding initiatives suggesting a less selfish world, a better awareness of diversity and needs. There are already many entrepreneurs of the Made in Italy, fashion and design, that since the first signs of the pandemic have made a race of generosity to help the health crisis with generous offers in money or with supplies of medical devices or even with funds to support families of virus victims (see HERE on our @AT)...

On his first presentation in the basement of Superstudio in 2009 Luca Nichetto, chosen among many young designers, won Elle Décor’s International award. On his second one, he presented a Prosciutteria (ham bar) in every detail located in a temporary architecture on the roof. Afterwards, an escalation took him from Venice, here he opened the first studio, up to Sweden, where he moved for love and where he settled. Today, he is a successful multi-tasking designer who has collaborations around the whole world, collects international awards, and is a guest of retrospectives in cities such as Venice, Paris, London, and Stockholm.  

In twenty years, from 2000 to 2020 what has changed and what will change?
The beginning of 2000 is also the year I began being a designer. I remember when I used to come to Milan, the fair was still downtown and events of Fuorisalone could be counted on a hand. The Fuorisalone was more romantic back then, there was Spazio Krizia with Ingo Maurer and Ron Arad as well as Driade in Via Manzoni and so on. I don’t know if it was international as, apparently, the whole world was there, but it was a more human dimension where you had the time to talk to people. From 2010 onwards it got out of control, it became a circus, where you can find events of a certain type of quality or find yourself in the middle of a situation that you can’t understand, with a quite tiresome sort of visual contamination...

Nanda Vigo, a light artist who collaborated with the greatest artists of the 60s and 70s, died in mid-May, leaving the mark of her strong personality. The last exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan was a late and in the same premonitory tribute to her greatness.

I remember a beautiful and lively blonde girl who, while I was looking at my first experiences as an editor, first in Ottagono and then in Vogue, in the second half of the 60s, turned the more traditional Milan upside down by bringing you with her teammates, Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, Enrico Castellani, and the great Gio Ponti, the effervescent wind of the avant-garde. It was with Fiorucci, a pioneer of all new things, that I met her, with a mixture of awe and admiration. She was strong, ironic, combative, in years when women still struggled to emerge in environments considered male. Artist, designer, architect? Each qualification was reductive for her. I found her in Nanda Vigo Light Project, the beautiful exhibition at Palazzo Reale curated by Marco Meneguzzo (summer 2019), the first anthological retrospective finally dedicated to her in Italy, after more than four hundred exhibitions around the world...

Her first approach to design was as a recent graduate at the inauguration of Design at Superstudio right beside Giulio Cappellini, who had sensed her talent. Step by step Ilaria Marelli has entered among the established contemporary designers keeping her fresh and curious approach to all the experiences that this entails, from the design of the object to the installations to the art direction, also touching fashion.

In your initial contact with Superstudio Design you were together with Cappellini for the first exhibition. What do you remember about that experience?
I remember perfectly well when we came to see the space - I was super adrenaline, it seemed to me an exciting challenge, many colleagues instead said "Giulio is crazy-how do you now two months from the Salone to put everything prepared back in play! "...well, he was right! Rivers of people in an area until then unknown to most, a wide-ranging setting and… there were also my first products! I remember the photo for the press together with Morrison, Wanders and Bouroullec, as if we were "au pair" designers, while I was a young graduate at the first approach to design… I still get excited about it!...

Jacopo Foggini, more an artist than a designer, took possession of an unusual material, methacrylate, of which he fell in love when he was a child. He has made it the basis of his artisanal and exclusive production of beautiful, colorful, unique, theatrical, light and even gigantic objects. Free objects that follow the wings of the imagination and forged manually, with the material brought to more than 200 degrees. In 2004, he brought his dreamlike flowers with a soul of light and a monumental chandelier to Superstudio.

Where does the passion for methacrylate come from?
My passion for methacrylate, a material commonly used to produce machine reflectors, was born in family companies. One night, at the age of five, I snuck into the plastic materials factory and I saw a red drop of methacrylate coming out of the "nose" of one of the huge machines. Since then this material has entered my imagination, and like a seed, slowly over the years, it has grown to become my life. In the 90s I started to experiment with its creative use, fascinated by its chromatic and aesthetic qualities...

The doubt is legitimate to follow the statements of the fashion big names, from Giorgio Armani to Alessandro Michele for Gucci, to Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent, to Dries Van Noten, to Alessandro Sartori for Zegna, the times and ways of the collections presentations must be rethought according to the creative visions of each, outside of catwalks and fixed appointments coordinated from above, more and more frenetic.

Slowing down is the key word that came out of the pandemic that will serve to redesign the future. Fashion bigs had a few months to rethink this increasingly accelerated system that forced them to a continuous flow of creativity, to churn out excess products, to a short-sighted marketing which could not see far, to an abnormal production that often created unsold intended for the parallel market. Slow-Fashion now takes its revenge on the Fast-Fashion that not many years ago has revolutionized the fashion world with ever new clothing at ever lower costs, filling the wardrobes but lowering the desire. It took the time of the #istayhome to look inside and wonder if the "so much", in all senses, had not really become too much...

The first woman to enhance Polish design outside the borders of her Poland, her mentor was Alessandro Mendini with whom she has worked and collaborated for a long time. To the work of designer, sculptress, art-director she alternates the curatorship of exhibitions, such as those dedicated to his master in Poznam in 2004 on the occasion of the entry of Poland into the European Community and in 2014 in Wroclaw in the year in which it was the Capital of European Culture. At Superstudio she arrived in 2011 and many more times.

Dorota between Poland and Italy, how did this happen?
My studio has been located on the Alzaia del Naviglio Grande in Milan for years, but I arrived in the city over twenty years ago for an internship in the Mendini Atelier. I studied in Poland, at the University of Art in Poznań, Faculty of Design and Interior Architecture with a thesis on Biodesign. I won three awards for the best degree and so I had the opportunity to go abroad to deepen my studies. I chose Italy, for its cultural wealth, its ancient history, the beauty of its landscape of its traditions and its people. I traveled around Italy and landed in Rome, for me the most beautiful city in the world with its squares, fountains, gardens, with the wings of angels in the paintings and sculptures of Ponte dell'Angelo...

Eco Social Designer, as he defines himself, has the special ability to bring beauty even from industrial waste. A highly topical issue in times of sustainability and circular economy. His first exhibition was at Superstudio 13, in 2012. Seats talking about a different way of thinking about the waste of our civilization.

Tell me about your choice to become an eco-social designer or a "waste designer" ahead of time.
It was 2008 and I was working as a permanent designer for a packaging company, but, after 5 years, I felt that the company reality was too tight and I needed to "speak with my voice". I was already very fascinated and intrigued by the plastic and glassy waste that resulted in the production process and I remember that I collected them to study and reinterpret them. Soon I realized that, in addition to making works with the waste materials that I found, I could draw on much more material by helping companies to recycle. Each of my creations gradually became a hand in ecology, to which I quickly joined the active participation of social associations...

Last year, at Superdesign Show, the Superstudio event for Design Week, I curated the immaterial but real sculptures exhibition  by Flavio Lucchini, a magical and unsettling experience created with Alvise Braga Illa's company Sense - immaterial Reality, founder of TXT e-solutions software company and Sense-immaterial Reality. An innovator able to cover new ground who moved among the first in bringing the Immaterial Reality where it could satisfy new functions. Three questions for him to find out what we can expect tomorrow.  

The boom of virtual experiences that put us in front of the coronavirus isolation has made even more current experimentations and applications of technologies that allow us to overcome the physicality to replace it with intangible presences as exciting as those experienced in first person, even if through a new dimension. All the more true and necessary when the work takes place in smart-working and choices and purchases do not allow to be on site, as it happens with fashion, art, design...

Since 2000 he lives and works right in the heart of Milan, where the Fuorisalone has simultaneously developed, starting from Superstudio, in the districts. In the former turbine factory, transformed into an extraordinary home and studio, with a panoramic terrace over Zona Tortona, he continuously develops different and imaginative projects, often irreverent, in every direction, from Italy to China. As an entrepreneur, he created a pop-design company that happily follows trends. Showing a trend.

You too, like Superstudio, were the first to understand that the "Zona Tortona" of great disuse factories between via Bergognone and the outer ring-road, could have been reborn with creativity. And even you have transformed an industrial building into a home-studio-exhibition space without distorting it.
In 1998 we bought an industrial building of the '30s part of the Riva Calzoni complex, at the corner of via Solari and via Stendhal. It was a four-storey building, all clad in red brick, inside which were located the turbine test room and offices of the engineers who designed them. On a corner of the building is located a 26 meters high turret that contained a water tank that was pumped into the basement and used for turbine testing.

While many wonder: but how will our life change "after"? we did not realize that we have already slipped into the uncertainty of tomorrow, anticipating a sea change, years before this happened naturally with all the  predictable  consequences.
If we think that as soon as we enter phase 3 of the emergency, social distancing, face masks, glasses, gloves, disinfectant, lockdown, are words to forget maybe we are hopeless  optimists. At least until a treatment or vaccine has been found for this insidious virus.
What are now annoying tasks have all the aura to became unwelcome habits that should be learned to live with even now. Let's dematerialize, forgetting hugs and kisses, laughter and karaoke, dinners and trips with friends. But also the reassuring visits of the family doctor, the pampering of the hairdresser and the beautician... 

We start today to present architects, designers, planners who have been, are and will be protagonists of our events related to design during the various Design week or other occasions. A roundup of the most famous names, an appointment here every Thursday.

Very young in 1980 was already in the Memphis group, together with other boys who would become protagonists of Milan in 2000. Aldo Cibic, counted by Domus among the one hundred best architects in the world in 2019, ten years before was at superstudio 13, with a small temporary living unit in the parking lot, with green spaces and vegetable garden. But at the time of coronavirus he's meditating on a new project, to be presented again to Superstudio. Meanwhile, he has left a mark in zona Tortona with Savona18 Suites hotel, an innovative hospitality project that lives among its iconic ...

We are all fine, with our hearts gripped by anguish every time news of the evolution of this terrible health situation reaches us. The world is locked, it's not know up to when. The hope and the desire to get back to life as usual keep us active, busy, focused, open to the new possibilities that the incredible reality that surrounds us today has shown us: forcing us to reinvent our lives and remodulate the scale of values. Family, affection, love in the first place. And consequently the house, rediscovered as the shelter that does not betray. Then, in random order, the work we have learned can be done on the couch, on a bench, on vacation, without fixed hours and physical chains, but mental stimulation only. Studies, which don’t take you away from teachers and classmates, only you see them in two dimensions, on the screen. Friends ...

Honestly, I too believe that once this health emergency is over (but will it ever really end?) we will all be more vulnerable and in danger. We have understood that it is not only the third world war, already touched on several times to threaten us.
Nor is Islamic and international terrorism frightening us.
Nor the delinquency that they tell us in decrease but that when it touches you it still terrifies you.
Nor the mass invasions of the world's poor who flee from impossible countries.
Nor the "climate change" with all the dark and real threats brought back to consciousness by Greta Thunberg.
Nor the coronavirus that an unheard Bill Gates had predicted four years ago and that only now goes around the net.
Nor the unstoppable drought that burns lives, the devastating Australian fires, the tsunamis that sweep everything under a wave ...

Despite the crisis, despite the uncertainty, despite the fear, we continue to believe that the appointment with Design in Milan will be - whenever it is - a moment of redemption, trust, beauty, progress, sociality. We are working to return at the beginning of summer with a renewed, sparkling and exciting Superdesign Show, together with the districts of Milan and the Salone. But also ready to propose real and virtual innovations that will make our event even more interesting and irreplaceable. With the presence of large global brands that are wondering about life and the environment. With a stroll through the cultured and technological proposals of the contemporary East. With an endless roundup of young international designers. With a special on Women Designers in the year dedicated to female creativity. With Supercampus ...

She is the most famous, esteemed and the most sought-after. She is the curator of Architecture and Design sector of MoMa of New York, where she arrived very young answering a job-posting on a newspaper, but also of the Broken Nature exhibition at Triennale of Milan where she points the finger at the environmental disaster. Gisella Borioli met her on the occasion of Lexus International Design Award. 

Your professional history is emblematic, especially in Italy. Is America always America?
I would rather say that New York is always New York. MoMa was an exceptional starting point. If you do something at MoMa, everyone sees it. There are extraordinary curators in the world that have not the visibility and opportunities that I have. However things are changing. There are many Biennials, Triennials, Design Weeks that are becoming popular, in Indiana, Istanbul, Beijing for example. Curators search for innovation. Nothing better than having the opportunity to discover other cities.