Cristiana Schiavolin runs praxis., a practice working with customer-facing brands and organisations in retail, hospitality, fashion and real estate.
“In both our corporate and client work we have always tried to stay hands-on and close to the markets and regions we serve,” Schiavolin says. “We aim to reach all levels of the work — from the broader strategy to the practical details of daily operations. The work is rarely abstract. It is grounded in what we can observe and experience directly.”
That way of working gradually produced questions that did not belong inside client projects. Instead of setting them aside, Schiavolin began giving them their own place. The result is Current. Commons, an ecosystem that sits alongside the consulting practice.
“The same habits of being close to markets, reaching into different levels of a project, and paying attention to what is happening on the ground kept generating questions and interests that did not always fit inside a client brief,” she explains. “We began making space for those questions.”
One example is the ongoing research into Chinatowns in different cities, which examines how these neighborhoods function as commercial and cultural hubs, their business models, and how they change over time.
The first concrete shared expression of this wider work arrived in October 2020 with the launch of appraisal. at present., a half-yearly publication focused on people-facing business. The timing was shaped by circumstance.
“It started during the pandemic when we could no longer travel or meet our counterparts in person,” Schiavolin says. “We were already conducting regular research. Suddenly those conversations became much harder. Rather than pause, we decided to open the process.” Contributors from the existing network, and some newly found practitioners, were invited to take part. What began as a practical response to the limits of the moment became a regular magazine.
The publication brings together contributors from different disciplines and places. When choosing contributors, the team looks for people with direct experience — at different stages of their careers, with different ambitions, and in different geographies — who are trying to understand more about the place and the market. Writers who work from observation, people of craft, and operators close to the day-to-day. The aim is simply to let different kinds of practical knowledge sit next to one another.
Current. commons. now includes several related initiatives. The newest addition is ORO.ISM., a media and commerce platform in the same fields. It will bring together content, brand work and a small number of carefully curated initiatives. It has not yet launched.
On ORO.ISM., Schiavolin is straightforward. “We want a place where people can talk about ordinary stuff, living well and extended hospitality without treating them as trends. The hope is to support conversations and small experiments that stay practical rather than promotional.”
There is no ambition to turn any of this into a large platform. “We are not trying to build a large platform,” she says. “We are trying to keep a living practice — one that includes writers, makers, operators and observers — and to let it develop at its own pace. Some periods are quieter than others. Some experiments remain small. That feels appropriate.”
What keeps the work going, she says, is persistence. The same approach used in client projects at Praxis carries through into Current. Commons.
