Head of Product Development @ Skidmore, Owings and Merrill – USA
Head of Product Development @ Skidmore, Owings and Merrill – USA
Athena Calderone is a multidisciplinary creative whose work spans design and entertaining.
Whether she is layering flavors in the kitchen, setting a bountiful table, or designing an entire room, Athena is renowned for her graceful yet juxtaposed pairings. Across her creative endeavors, she is fueled by her belief that beautiful food and thoughtful design bring people together and turn little moments into lasting memories. Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Food & Wine, Vogue, Bon Appétit, Harper’s Bazaar, Martha Stewart, Goop, Elle Decor and more.
Deemed “the modern girl’s Martha Stewart” by the New York Times, she has written two books, Cook Beautiful (Abrams 2017) and Live Beautiful (Abrams 2020), which expand on her culinary and design content that she regularly publishes on Eyeswoon. Her cookbook, Cook Beautiful received the highest culinary honor – a James Beard Award for photography. Live Beautiful remains a number one bestseller on Amazon’s prestigious home decor list. It is both a showpiece of exquisite design, and a guide to creating a home that is thoughtfully put together. Top international brands regularly invite Athena to lend her design eye and culinary talents to creative direction projects.
Athena’s podcast, More Than One Thing, focuses on multi-hyphenate talents whose creative interests have led them on a nonlinear career path. Through raw and honest conversations with dynamic creatives, it is revealed how each person navigated road blocks, pushed through uncertainties, and challenged themselves to explore a variety of professional endeavors. Athena’s interview style immediately resonated with listeners, with more than 445K downloads in her first and second seasons, MTOT has repeatedly found a place in the Apple podcast top 100.
She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, and puppy.
Photo credit: Stephanie Stanley
Denis Montel and Julia Capp met at RDAI, the architecture, interior architecture & design studio founded in 1972 by Rena Dumas. A graduate of the École d’Architecture Paris-La Défense, the first professional experiences of Denis were transdisciplinary. For ten years he collaborated with agencies leading a variety of projects including architecture, interior architecture, landscape, scenography and brand design. He joined RDAI in 1999 directing major projects of the agency. When Rena Dumas passed away in 2009, he was appointed General Manager and artistic director. Julia, an architect & designer, is Australian, and after having worked in Asia moved to Europe in 1998 and joined RDAI. She has worked in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai, where she developed residential and commercial projects – including hotels and clubs. In 2014 Julia attended the French Fashion Institute in Paris where she completed her MBA. Today Julia is the agency’s Managing Director.
RDAI’s holistic approach, brings together the practices of architecture, interior architecture and design. By embracing context as well as customs and traditions, the studio delivers cross-disciplinary projects that are coherent and contemporary. Denis and Julia strip away the superfluous to lay bare the essential, with an intuitive as well as conceptual approach.
Photo credits: Guillaume Grasset
Art director and designer – IT
Director @ Dubai Design Week – UAE
Graduated from Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo Mackenzie in 1983, Arthur Casas created Studio Arthur Casas in 1999; since then, he has gained recognition over the years and has received numerous national and international awards. With offices in São Paulo and Nova York, the Studio has over 300 concluded projects in several areas, including residential and commercial architecture, corporate and urban projects, as well as public
competitions in Brazil and abroad. Arthur Casas’s performance in furniture and object design is as remarkable as the architectural one. He started designing exclusive furniture for his clients, but soon he started receiving invitations to also design for national and international brands, such as Butzke, Riva, Metalfergo, Etel, Micasa, Dpot, Casa Matriz, Novo Rumo, Poliform, Danao Living, Herança Cultural and Espasso. Among his creations
there are tables, chairs, sofas, sideboards, armchairs, benches, door knobs, cups and cutlery. Even with diverse functionalities, the products have in common a clean design, pure lines and a search for an aesthetic based only in the essential. The result is objects that coexist successfully on the threshold between art and design.
Daughter of Italian design master Achille Castiglioni, Giovanna Castiglioni was born in Milan in 1972 and graduated from university with a degree in Geological Sciences. Subsequently, she decided to dedicate herself to the management of the studio and design legacy of her legendary father. Since 2005, Giovanna has been the Curator of the Studio Museum of Achille Castiglioni and in 2012 was appointed Vice President and General Secretary of the Achille Castiglioni Foundation. Today, she organizes and coordinates the activities of the Foundation, especially the archiving of its unique cultural heritage. Giovanna shares and promotes the ‘Castiglioni Method’ of design to a wide and diverse public drawn from across the world. She also hosts conferences and holds worldwide workshops for the Foundation with a style built on creating a dynamic interaction with her audiences.
In addition, and with a select team of young designers, Giovanna creates a variety of experiential exhibitions to ensure that the Studio Museum in Piazza Castello 27, Milan always remains a stimulating and interactive destination. In collaboration with Italian designer Marco Marzini, she curates and performs in the show ‘A Casa Castiglioni’, first presented at the AbitaMI fair in 2011 and at other venues thereafter. She is also curator of the project ‘100×100 Achille’ organized in association with design journalist Chiara Alessi and leading art and design author Domitilla Dardi. The project presents a collection of more than 100 anonymous objects given away for the centenary celebration of the birth of Achille Castiglioni by a group of over 100 leading international designers.
In 2020 she started a collaboration with IED to develop a thesis with the students to bring the Foundation/Museum outside possibly in other place in the city, courtyards, and squares. Since 2008, Giovanna has been a lecturer at the Politecnico of Milan School of Design and since 2016, a principal teacher of a workshop entitled ‘Master Lighting Design & Led Technology’. Giovanna has also taught and lectured at Scuola Politecnica of Design SPD and Domus Academy in Milan.
In 2022 she will be invited as speaker at the Design Strategic Master and Creative Direction with Vince Castellana (Abadir Professor), Francesco Zurlo (Ph.D., is Deputy Dean of the School of Design of Politecnico of Milan and President of POLI.design) and Luciano Galimberti (President in ADI and ADI Design Museum).
In 2022 she will lead together with Michela Dezzani (researcher, teacher, and trainer of the Bruno Munari Method) a series of experimentation workshops entitled “Vietato saper disegnare” (It is forbidden to know how to draw). This workshop represents an opportunity to learn more about the history of writing through a large collection of drawing tools that allows young and old people to try out the shapes of graphite and leave enough time for creativity. And many other workshops are in working progress!
She is the author of a series of flipbooks entitled ‘Castiglioni in 2 seconds’, the first three editions being on the subjects of Achille Castiglioni’s Lampadina lamp created for Flos in 1972, his Basello side table designed for Zanotta in 1987 and the RR126 stereo HI-FI designed for Brionvega in 1965. This year she presented another two flipbooks dedicated to Parentesi lamp (1972-2021) with its new edition and Dry cutlery set and many other objects for Alessi. She is also the curator of the exhibition “Castiglioni in 2 sec.” held between 2020 and 2021 at the Sozzani Gallery in Corso Como 10 in Milan with the exhibition of part of her collection of objects related to Sara Vivan’s illustrations featured in their flipbooks.
During the pandemic period she strongly developed a communication program to keep the attention alive on the Achille Castiglioni Foundation with interactive remote e-learning and many live-video on or through our Instagram profile.
Despite these many activities and commitments, Giovanna says that she still doesn’t know what she’ll do when she grows up!
www.fondazioneachillecastiglioni.it
Instagram: @fondazioneachillecastiglioni @castiglionigiovi
Photo credit: Annette Cheung
Federico was born on the 15th of June 1968 in Salisbury, Rhodesia. Even though it is currently known as Harare, Zimbabwe, Federico prefers to use it’s pre-revolutionary name. This is because of the dramatic political and humanitarian developments caused by the oppressive regime of Mugabe; that caused the revolution and ultimately the return of his family in Italy in 1970.
He grew up in Rome, in a family where art is a constant element: His mother, her partner both painters, equally his grandmother, daughter if the arts. Unfortunately however, Federico is incapable of drawing… that is how he finds the way to express his innate creativity through photography. In 1989 he moves to Florence to assist his photographer father and “learn the profession.” He then moves to New York to carry out a course at Parsons University: An experience that gave him the keys to his creative interpretation, qualities that are still at the basis of his career.
In 1991 he moves to Milan, where he elaborates his technical knowledge and starts to work independently, collaborating with fashion magazines.
In 1997, from the union with Cristiana Gastel, with whom he shares the passion for photography, his first daughter Bianca was born. Matilde was born in 1998 and the Pietro ten years later in 2008.
His career has a turning point in 1996 when he starts collaborating with ELLE DÉCOR; a collaboration that allows him to discover a new world, the one of design photography. The latter reflects his life philosophy by being less neurotic and stressed (even though fascinating) than the one of fashion photography. He most of all realises that to emerge in the field of photography, as in every field, one must master in the best way possible the matter in discussion, consequently loving and comprehending it. Fashion fascinated Federico, whilst the world of design made him completely passionate. He explains that if he hadn’t have had this overwhelming passion for photography, he probably would have ended up being an architect or a designer.
Throughout the years, he collaborated with a series of magazines that comprehended a variety of sectors (Vogue, Elle, Grazia, Elle Décor (in many international editions), Grazia Casa, D Repubblica, Io Donna, Vogue Gioello, Vogue Pelle, Amica, Casa Amica, VS…) and with many clients to whom he produced catalogue images for advertising campaigns. He always participated actively in the creative phase of various projects (Knoll, BeB, Arclinea, Rimadesio, Cassina, Poliform, Minotti, Bisazza, Rubelli, Arketipo, Desalto, Redaelli, Nemo, Alpi, Fantini, Boffi, De Padova).
Federico always tempted to create for himself space and time to develop his research, merging commercial requirements with his own aesthetic sensibility. He also had the luck to “teach” (even though he prefers to define it as a “sharing of experiences”) in a series of workshops and has been very positively hit by the feedback he received from the participants.
The objectives for the near future are mostly tied to the development of more personal projects. They should enclose the experiences that he has had until now and find a way to develop a didactic path.
Federico Cedrone on ARCHILOVERS
photo credit: Giovanni Gastel
Partner @ Stefano Boeri Architetti – IT
Professor, Director @ The Centre for Sustainable Design® – University for the Creative Arts (UCA) – UK
