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.

The 60th anniversary of Amica, coinciding a new revival under the direction of editor Danda Santini, is also an opportunity for a remembrance of the birth of the innovative women's weekly, as Corriere della Sera also pointed out (Wednesday, Nov. 30). Flavio Lucchini, president of Superstudio Group and artist, is the art director who created the original graphic design and set the revolutionary image of the magazine that, after a long incubation, saw the light in 1962. So in his book "Il Destino - dovevo fare il contadino ma ho incontrato la moda," Gedi edition (request at Superstudio or on amazon), Lucchini traces the start of that publishing adventure.

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.

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...

“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...

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...

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. 

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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)...

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...

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 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 ...