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.

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. The typical industrial architecture of the '30s was characterized by a series of high vertical windows on the ground floor, over 10 meters high, and a horizontal window that ran along the entire building on the top floor of the offices. Its renovation lasted 3 years, it was quite complex since all plans, including the ground floor, had to be rebuilt from scratch or heavily reinforced. The concrete glass windows have been replaced by new fixtures that allow air circulation. However, the architectural image of the building has been faithfully maintained, bringing the red brick facades back to their original state, leaving unaltered all the windows openings and all the architectural elements, including handrails, downpipes, ladders and the metal vents that characterized the aesthetics of the building.

Design, fashion, digitization and innovation.  How can/must these elements interact with each other in your opinion?
In 2008 I realized the potential of synergy between fashion and design and I worked for a year on the project of a start-up that should have led to the creation of a new brand that was to be based on the production of objects, accessories and fashion items.
I started with a big fashion producer and I had him meet with Alessi to create a joint venture between the two brands. The company followed me up to a certain point then, since the crisis was starting to rage, it eventually decided to postpone.
My idea was to create a brand that would bring together items such as those of Qeeboo, the company I then created, and some clothing, t-shirts, sweatshirts and jeans, addressed to a young audience. In hindsight I think that it may have made a big mistake in underestimating the strategic importance of that task.

The first twenty years of the twenty-first century saw an acceleration in the mixing of these elements. What do you expect will change in the next ten or twenty years?
The interaction between design and fashion is now stronger and more necessary. In the most evolved showrooms, objects with their sculptural appeal complement and reinforce the scenery created by clothes and fabrics, the colors of the objects make a match and recall the color of the clothes. Stores tied to the furniture on one side are dying, those tied to the kitchen objects on the other. The focus moves on increasingly transversal concept stores and ambassadors of this cultural cross over where fashion and design find their integration and mutual completion.

Can you report a "business" that you appreciate (yours or others) in which these elements happily dialogue?
The Qeeboo brand that I created four years ago today stands as an emerging brand in combining fashion and design and is now the ideal brand to be sold in fashion showrooms. There are many top shops all over the world selling Qeeboo products, from the various Corso Como Milano Shangai Seoul New York to the shops of Paul Smith in London, Lane Crawford in Hong Kong and others.