Since 2000 Superstudio, with its two locations Superstudio Più and Superstudio 13, has been the initiator of the project that spread design into the city, bringing it out from its institutional headquarters of the Fair. Starting from the Tortona District, where Superstudio is based, the April Design Week expanded throughout the whole Milan. A true city phenomenon replicated by other districts and a case study around the world. The great quality, commitment and selection of Superstudio’s project has changed title over the years (from Temporary Museum for New Design to Superdesign Show) but it has always been led by Gisella Borioli, CEO of Superstudio Group with the collaboration of Giulio Cappellini, designer, art director and great character of the world of design. The project has helped the city of Milan to earn a unique and international prestige and authority. Today Superdesign Show presents a coordinated direction and continues following its mission: “Only The Best“. Innovating constantly, presenting the latest valuable news from the worlds of design, technology and lifestyle in a landscape that unites great brands and start-up, archistars and young designers, industrial productions and proposals of craftsmanship under the sign of quality. This is the goal we achieve in our Milan venues during every Design Week.
2000
In 2000 the large multi-cultural private exhibiting centre Superstudio Più is created in via Tortona. Design, in its most innovative aspects, is soon at home in the new Superstudio. Giulio Cappellini, the “made-in-Italy” design leader, and Via, association of the most interesting French designers, inaugurate the exhibiting space by bringing in Avant-guard design, young architects and designers that will become stars in the years to come with a new lively concept that designs the way of living and inhabit the future. Straight afterwards the objects and design exhibitions and cultural initiatives, spread rapidly also to Superstudio 13, the photographic studios in via Forcella, creating the first design pathway in this ex-industrial, some suburban area. This is the base and focus point of the new FuoriSalone in Tortona district that soon became the most lively and interesting district in the city. The event held alongside to the large “Salone del Mobile” in the new Rho Fair, offers the international design the opportunity to find new spaces and new ways of expression. Superstudio emphasizes its leadership by creating new initiatives whereas the FuoriSalone in the new Tortona District becomes an example to the whole city that, along these lines, in the years to come, will open many more areas temporarily dedicated to design.
2009
In 2009, Superstudio updates the concept of design exhibitions while maintaining the careful curation of Gisella Borioli and the artistic direction of Giulio Cappellini.
The district that developed around via Tortona and via Savona becomes crowded of initiatives with an “excess of success” that brought a huge and curious international public as well as some concerns. Once again, Superstudio reaffirms its guiding and trend-setting role with a new project highlighting quality, coherence, research, innovation, the dialogue among contemporary visual arts. The Temporary Museum for New Design is thus created: on the basis of “less fair, more museum” formula, it selects and invites its exhibitors by encouraging them to present new products through emotional and sensorial installations, enhancing commercial proposals with artistic and cultural incentives.
“Site specific” exhibitions, thematic expositions, selective group exhibitions, national pavilions, identification and highlighting of trends, international artists participation, common parts are set-up according to the year’s theme, lounge and areas for reflection or relax make the visit at Superstudio Più and Superstudio 13 (over 13.000msq exhibiting space, in fact the largest exhibiting private space of the area) not unlikely a tour in the great contemporary museums of the world. Instead of open stands of fairs, many closed “galleries” where design is valued in its productive and cultural contents. No logos at the entrances but titles and contents just like in art exhibitions. A little revolution that has immediately much success and influences other presentations over the following years.
2015 – 2017
Superstudio celebrates 15 years as protagonist of the international Design in Milan with the new format Superdesign Show, a project that replaces and incorporates the success of the Temporary Museum for New Design pointing out how design outdid itself, along with conventions, prejudices, categories, hierarchies, limits, boundaries and even physical laws, sometimes daring the impossible.
A large container that faces with renovated projects the present facts. On the one hand, the fascination of the Temporary Museum is preserved by entrusting some international brands with the task to explore the outer reach of creativity and narrate them in emotional paths that fascinate and surprise the visitor like a sensorial show. On the other hand, more and more opening to research, scouting, to selection of authors that experiment innovative solutions to improve our lives. Alongside with great protagonists of international design and multinational corporations, there come Start-Ups, Makers, Young Talents, Selected Objects, Art-Design, e-commerce, Fab-Lab, 3d Objects and all the latest expressions of design in constant research and updating.
2018-2019
Superstudio confirms itself as the most significant pole of Tortona district. The new project is called Only the Best, always curated by Gisella Borioli with the artistic direction of Giulio Cappellini.
2020
Superstudio Maxi, a venue born from the art-driven regeneration of an old steel factory, opens in Via Moncucco. The space adds beauty, culture, innovation, and vitality to the “Barona area,” which is already lively with the presence of IULM University and new signature architectural developments. Superstudio Maxi gets its name because it occupies an area of 10,000 m² with a covered surface of 7,200 m² and can host up to 3,500 people. It is the largest private exhibition space in Milan and the first event venue in Europe to be LEED certified (the global standard for constructing green buildings).
2021
Superdesign Show September Special Edition. Superstudio’s project for the Milan Design Week is a true r/evolution of our usual format made by theatrical installations and it is becoming closer to an art exhibition, rather than a fair. Using the rigour, the harmony and same museum-like care that has always characterized Superdesign Show, Superstudio presents a series of collective and individual thematic areas, each of them with one independent and competent curator.
The event takes place at well-known Superstudio Più in via Tortona 27: a great hub and a mouthpiece of innovation and creativity since 20 years. The need of concreteness, innovation, lightness, sustainability, inclusiveness, interconnection arising in the year after the pandemic transforms the iconic spaces of Superstudio Più thanks to the work of the exhibitors and the interest of visitors.
The Superstudio Book: 20 Years of Design
2000/2020 DESIGN SUPER SHOW evoluzione e mise-en-scène del design al Superstudio di Milano
The book retraces the birth of Milan’s first multicultural hub, Superstudio Più in Via Tortona, and the city’s most significant event, the Design Week, which originated from this very place. “2000/2020 DESIGN SUPER SHOW” by Gisella Borioli with graphic concept by Flavio Lucchini recounts twenty years of innovative design exhibitions with 520 pages, 750 images, and 70 interviews with the great protagonists of architecture and design who have passed through Superstudio. It’s a non-chronological diary of creativity and emotions, not just a testimony of how architecture, design, and the world of projects have changed, but also of how the entire city has transformed, thanks to the intelligence, including international contributions, that have played their part.
To purchase a printed or digital copy of the book, contact: info@superstudiogroup.com
2022
LOOKING AHEAD is the general theme of the Superdesign Show 2022, with which interesting designers and companies align themselves by glimpsing “beyond”, exploring unknown territories, anticipating needs and trends, translating the word “sustainability” into concrete proposals, and redesigning our lives, which have become unexpectedly more complicated. The occasion of Design Week 2022, assigned by the pandemic to an anomalous month (June), rendered even more uncertain by the war in Ukraine, makes the date with design a moment of optimism that aims to repair the social, commercial, and productive fabric in a positive manner. The setup aims towards the internationality of companies and designers, with special attention to the countries of the East and Far East, and on the evermore interesting feminine creativity still perhaps not fully valorised.
The 2022 Superdesign Show presents itself from the viewpoint of the construction of the space as a spontaneous village, developed across areas of interest with site-specific “buildings” and installations arranged in the grand halls of Superstudio Più, where people can move freely. The subjects proposed by the exhibitor tackle today’s major discussion topics looking into the future.
2023
“Inspiration Innovation Imagination” is the motto with which Superdesign Show 2023 questions the future of design, increasingly connected with alternative world versions. It’s an opportunity to reflect on the “futures” that await us, through spectacular installations and challenging projects promoted by carefully selected companies, realities, and partners. Common to all participants is an open approach that probes in different ways the subtle boundary between design and technologies, touching on highly topical issues such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and the metaverse, to understand how our homes and architectures will evolve tomorrow. Superstudio, through its Virtual Pavilion, brings the experience of fairs, exhibitions, and events to life on any device.
The section dedicated to significant Asian presences is also renewed, while for the “Unexpected Objects” the common thread is surprise, innovation, and non-triviality in the projects of designers who have worked with artists, artists who have behaved like designers. The collective “Stars of Today,” curated by Giulio Cappellini, presents ten contemporary protagonists, while the Women&Design section returns with “Mirror – CreaTTive allo specchio”.