Speaking of restless women who have left their sign, in the cultural world of Milan and beyond, journalist Maria Grazia Mazzocchi is one of those who have been able to influence the city and innovate radically in diverse sectors, from publishing to education to design to music and, recently, clearing the "cold shoulder" of museums and introducing them to an increasingly wider public. On the occasion of InTour, a fall event of MuseoCity, of which she is chairman, let's get to know her better

-  To talk about MuseoCity I would start by introducing the woman, who founded it and leads it after numerous experiences. How was born and how does " Mrs President" Maria Grazia Mazzocchi rise between publishing, journalism, design, music, culture, training always experienced with the same amount of enthusiasm?

   Indeed, life has led me to deal with very different topics, but always related to the world of art, and it seems to me that this has been a great gift, completely undeserved. From the editorial staff of Domus to Domus Academy to the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory to MuseoCity, I have had the opportunity to get to know different types of Arts and many really special designers and artists. I confess, however, that I sometimes regret that I did not become a pediatrician, as I dreamed of when I was young... sometimes I wonder if I would have been able to treat children properly?

Putting together passions an competences, Fabio and Lorenza Castelli, formidable father-and-daughter couple, gave birth to MIA (Milano Image Fair), the most important photography and auteur visual, ten years ago at Superstudio in via Tortona. A steel entrepreneur and passionate collector him, graduated in Economics at Bocconi but grew up with art in all its forms her, after ten years and an indisputable success, in the moment of the restart they find themselves at home in the new Superstudio Maxi, where on July 14th the press conference of the next MIA takes place and where the next edition of the Fair will take place...

Architect, curator, professor at the Politecnico di Milano, editorial director but above all, since 1998, Design permanent collection Curator at Triennale Museum in Milan and Director of the first city Design Museum, designed by Michele De Lucchi, where she remains until 2019. In 2016 she opened up a window on female creativity with “W. Women in Italian Design" exhibition. Who better than her can tell us about Donne & Design?

You were director of the first Design Museum in Milan. A very important role for a woman 13 years ago. How did you get there?
Thank you for remembering it: the first Design Museum in Italy was founded in Milan in 2007 and for 11 years it has investigated Italian design's history starting from different questions and doubts, because there is no official, clear and universally shared design history...

Looking at women as architecture and design protagonists, it immediately stands out that in addition to a very few world-renowned womankind archistars, many studios are conducted by a cosy couple where she’s completely equal and complementary to him. Business relationship, born out of esteem and love, whose success is due to the strange chemistry that this type of partnership generates, especially after many years of mutual cooperation. It can be found in elegant objects, creative consultancy, sophisticated interior projects by Palomba Serafini Associati studio... Ludovica (Serafini) and Roberto (Palomba) celebrated their 25 years together in Milan before the pandemic darkness with an exhibition of very important unique pieces between art, design and artistic manufacture. They tell their two-voice story for AT with complicity and joy...

Leonardo Talarico is a name among design talent-scouts as one of the most interesting between the last generation professionals. His personality is strong and never over the top like objects he designs. A few straight, round, simple lines redefining contemporary scene emerging from decorativism excesses, recovering an essential elegance hasty to define as minimalism. Instead, it is an accurate and original new spatiality's study. We met him at a very young age as collaborator of his teacher, Giulio Cappellini, right at Superstudio. An expert panel awarded him during his first product presentation, among  young talents of Discovering section. We have seen him grow: his latest works show a very original and interesting maturity and vision that it is worth knowing. Ten questions starting from scratch...

He is not an architect, a designer or an artist but he is certainly a creative man who calmly combines all the qualities of creatives people he works with and whose ideas he puts on the market. All treated lightly, with irony, in a life's view where the unknown, the surprise, the wonder, the different, the game are real values. His affinity with artists such as Maurizio Cattelan or Studio Job has then made kitsch like art and vice versa. Seletti stores represent a bit  what Fiorucci boutiques were many years ago: a fantasy place without formal and cultural boundaries.

During these twenty years, what has changed, and now what will change?
Everything, from the way you sit on a sofa to food culture.

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...

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...

Architect, biophilic designer and sustainable advisor, winner of the World Green Design Contribution Awards and the Green Building Council Italia Leadership Awards, he has been working for years on the sustainability theme through hybrid proposals ranging from architecture to interiors and green details of lifestyles.

You call yourself as a biophilic designer. What does that mean exactly?
Being a biophilic designer means placing the  focus on "Human" factor with Environment and Nature Ecosystem...

We republish interview with Emilio Genovesi, a very important figure in the world of Design with important political, institutional and entrepreneurial positions, who passed away in recent days. His Materials Village at Superstudio Più has brought novelties, innovation, research, vision into materials world during Design Week for five years and other projects were underway.
We'll all miss him, but we believe his legacy will continue.

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...

To understand Job Smeets, a visionary artist who has no equal, I would suggest starting from his website, which tells more than a thousand words. Everything is spectacular, unique, questionable, quirky, opulent. In fact it’s the other side of modernity: the one which hybridizes banality and visions, technology and manual skills, pop and kitsch, humor and horror, function and dysfunction, museums and markets, awards and provocation. With a global success result.

And finally from Antwerp, after so many successful exhibitions, awards initiatives, you arrive in Milan…  
After living in Paris, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, London...

He began by scorching the historical icons of design, authentic pieces by Eames, Rietveld, Gaudí. Smoke series is in fact the starting point which clarifies his vision, 2002, just graduated. A few years later he arrived at Superstudio, 2006, with Clay, a series of imperfect, irregular chairs and cabinets, as if modeled by hand. And indeed they are. Plasticine-coated skeletons. With his naïf, funny, conceptual, theatrical, rebellious work that shakes the world of beauty and perfection - already called Contemporary Kitsch - Maarten Baas immediately stands as one of the most influential young Dutch designers of the new century, where roads branch off and show new horizons...

His life, his professionalism, his ubiquity, his commitment to a different future make him a unique professional. Wikipedia states: architect and engineer, Carlo Ratti teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, USA, where he directs the MIT Senseable City Lab. Esquire magazine included him among the "Best & Brightest", Forbes among "Names You Need to Know" and Wired in the list of "50 people who will change the world". Fast Company named him among the "50 most influential designers in America" and Thames & Hudson among the "60 innovators shaping our creative future". Two of his projects - Digital Water Pavilion and Copenhagen Wheel – were included in Time magazine’s “Best Inventions of the Year”...