DANIELA CATTANEO DIAZ 

head of H+ and Hfilms

Daniela Cattaneo Diaz is founder and head of H+ and Hfilms respectively a communication consulting company and a production house operating mainly in the cultural and art sectors with a focus on unconventional advertising, urban design, city branding and public engagement and activation. 

Growing up between Milan, Paris and New York, Daniela studied InternationalBusiness and Public Health at Colgate and Cornell University.  After completing her studies in 1988, she was chosen to join Aspen Institute as a young leader, and started working in the advertising world, following the production of large campaigns for clients such as Eni, Enel, Fiat, Coca Cola, General Motors, Nike, and Unilever. 

In 2001 she founded Hfilms, a production house whose soon became well established in Italy and abroad. Many of Daniela’s works achieved international recognition, presented in festivals as Cannes Lions, and Biennale di Venezia and won important awards. 

In 2006 she founded h+, an integrated production and communication strategy agency, where she initiated a dialogue between the business world and the public sphere to generate projects with a positive external impact for the city and, therefore, the people. The first was Enel Contemporanea, a public art project entirely produced by Enel and curated by h+, currently at its seventh edition. 

Following the great impact and positive feedback the project attracted, territorial engagement and public­private collaborations became H+ established way of operating. Among its projects,  h+ facilitated the opening of MACRO Contemporary Art Museum in Rome, relaunched GAM Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan through a partnership with UBS,  and she launched successful “diffused festivals” all focusing on music, culture end sustainability such as Piano City, Book City and Green City. 

Now at its seventh edition, Piano City has became an integral part of the Milanese cultural landscape, replicated also in other cities both in Italy and, soon, abroad. H+ has thus become the  first dealing  with the territory and the cities as a communications media for businesses.

Daniela is also among the founders of BASE Milano, a new creative project for the city, which H+, together with other three private partners and the Municipality of Milan, developed within the Ex-Ansaldo complex. A twelve thousand square meters space including a co-working space, a concierge for use by the people of the district, a carpentry for everyone to build their on furniture, a cafeteria, an artists residency, exhibition and temporary events spaces, all designed under the creative direction of h+; BASE is a new pillar for the city, where culture is at the centre of every decision-making process. 

Following her aim of building a bridge between different places and publics through art and culture, Daniela has now opened a new H+ branch in Palermo, where she will coordinate the second edition of Piano City Palermo, as well as the launch of a project to advance Italian contemporary art in the context of Manifesta Biennale. The choice of Palermo as a new office headquarter is part of Daniela’s vision for the city as an outpost for the development of the south, as well as a bridge between Italy and the Mediterranean.