Virginia Sommadossi

creative director

Since 2001 she has been the Creative Director at Centrale Fies—the research centre for contemporary performance practices in Trentino-Alto Adige—managing image and communication, and, since 2014, she has supervised the projects and public programmes for the centre, aimed at further strengthening its practices, focus, philosophies and cultural policies. Culture is not the only field that she is involved in, but it is the instrument she uses within the processes of interweaving art and culture with disciplines ranging from tourism to fashion, from design to agriculture. She was brought up in close contact with performing arts and contemporary theatre and earned a degree in Humanities at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore with a thesis entitled “Hybrids-When Art Meets Porn-” on the power of the genital body as read through the trends of performance art, advertising and indi-porn. Since 2017, she has been in charge of communication and the visual identity of the first master’s degree course with the word “Performing Arts” in the title at IUAV [University of Venice], which, from 2021, will be split into two curricula—Performance and Gender Studies, and Choreographic Theatre Studies. Since 2020, she has been the coordinator within the creative direction of apap – FEMINIST FUTURES run by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Andrea Maragno
fka
JOE VELLUTO

designer

Andrea Maragno in 2002, founds the design and communication studio JoeVelluto; he is the Education Manager of the Scuola Italiana Design, a division of the “Galileo Visionary District” Science Park in Padua. He has lectured on design and creativity in all the major Italian institutes and universities.
In 2002, he presents “RosAria” a disposable rosary bead made of bubble wrap, the first official project to become part of the permanent design collection of the Neue Sammlung Museum in Munich.
Some of his career highlights include: in 2005, presentation of the book “Salefino: nuovi sapori dal design italiano” [Salefino: new tastes from Italian design], publisher – Abitare Segesta; in 2008, the project “Saver” by Coroitalia was mentioned in the ADI Design Index. In November of the same year, he presents the exhibition/manifesto “UseLess Is More” – the first interpretation of the “Adesign” concept, from which the book distributed by Corraini takes its name.
In 2011 he presents “FunCoolDesign”, a solo exhibition curated by Oliviero Toscani at the Triennale Design Museum – Milan, Electa catalogue.
In 2014 he exhibits the Amen/Lumen project at the MARS gallery in Milan with the participation of Maestro Alessandro Mendini and curated by Beppe Finessi.
He has been part of the Fabrica scientific committee, the Benetton group’s communication research centre directed by Oliviero Toscani.
He is the author of the book “Estetica della Meditazione” [Aesthetics of Meditation], published by RCS – Corriere della Sera, 2021.
He is a Zen monk under the aegis of Master Tetsugen Serra, and co-manager for the OraZen Temple in Padua.

Andrea Maffei

architect

Andrea Maffei’s story begins with a trip to Japan where he went to work with the architect Arata Isozaki. A collaboration that inspired both professionally. Once he returned from Japan, he founded the Andrea Maffei Architects studio, which, among many other jobs, handles the development and planning of projects where he is co-author with Isozaki. The approach that characterises the genesis and development of his work concentrates on interpreting the client’s needs through a type of design that makes the best use of the context in which the structure will be located.
He is not interested in creating a form so it may be filled with functions; on the contrary, the core of the project is precisely these functions or, in the case of redevelopment of existing structures, it is looking at the history that they possess to identify the meaning they may have for today.
Maffei has completed major projects and had considerable experience in the Asian and Middle Eastern cultural context, including his role as project leader for Sheikh Al-Thani’s Al Wabrah villa in Doha, Qatar (1999-2001) and later for the project to expand the Qatar History Museum.
Among his most famous projects, he designed, with Isozaki, the Allianz Tower in Milan’s CityLife complex which at 242 metres high is now the tallest skyscraper in Italy. “Conceived as a skyscraper without end, a sort of endless tower” for which the aspiration is “maximum verticality and upward tension, without the limit of having to choose a complete and finished form, rather it applies the concept of a modular system that can be repeated infinitely without interruption”.

Read the biography here