Location Exansaldo
Days 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21,
Address via tortona, 54-56
Zone tortona

LIVING KITCHEN

Veneta Cucine is a leader in making the changes which are occurring in the way the kitchen is conceived and experienced.
In the Ansaldo area at Eurocucina 2008, Veneta Cucine is presenting Living Kitchen, a project developed in cooperation with Domus Academy, Francesco Morace/Future Concept Lab, Andrea Branzi, Dante Donegani & Giovanni Lauda, and Paolo Rizzato.
The project is developed along two different levels of study.
Ten students in the 2007 Master program in Design and Design Interaction at Domus Academy (from Italy, Turkey, Korea, Spain, Japan, India, Lebanon and Peru) have interpreted the kitchen according to new functional standards involving their own cultural roots and diverse ways of preparing and consuming food.
Andrea Branzi, Dante Donegani & Giovanni Lauda, and Paolo Rizzato have elaborated the theme of the kitchen and its relative area using three concepts that are very different, yet complementary.

Incubator, the project by Andrea Branzi, is based on two innovative ideas.
The first is the concept of a “habitable kitchen” where you can sleep directly on top of machines (appliances, TV set, printer, fax, etc.) contained into a single storage unit, thus leaving the surrounding area free for activities that have not been planned (or designed into the arrangement).
The second idea consists of an elastic kitchen framework made up of two modules which slide one over the other so that the length of the kitchen can be adapted as needed.

The Territorial Kitchen by Dante Donegani and Giovanni Lauda can assimilate languages and rituals from different lands and traditions, and even invert their values and meanings. It’s a kitchen that “cooks” established images, sensorial inputs and habits, and transforms them into new recipes. It’s a “habitable” kitchen, but not the kind described in classified ads, which has its own dedicated space and its own architecture; rather, it’s a territorial system whose original potential (for cooking, working, storing, eating and drinking) is expanded to include new pleasures and new forms of habitability.
The design “language” used is one of simplicity; that is, it’s an alphabet of only a few formal elements. The storage units are built like wooden crates, and the shelves (which look like racks or pergolas placed on the countertop) are equipped to distribute electricity and to accept elements providing additional functions. Also, special columns for storing wine, water and vegetables are created by placing unassuming kitchen tools on top of one another...

The idea of Paolo Rizzato is a kitchen module stripped to the bare minimum in terms of size, yet complete as far as functional components are concerned. The project is based on the concept of reduction: reduction in size, reduction in models offered, reduction in the difficulty of assembly and connection, reduction in costs.
In this kitchen project, a series of appliances offered on the market are merely chosen, assembled and then arranged intelligently in the simplest, most compact, most economical way possible.
When closed, the module looks like a simple parallelepiped that is slightly detached from the wall and almost suspended in space. It’s actually a large sideboard whose central opening is shielded by a shutter that opens to reveal the work surface. The surface, in turn, is an integrated, multi-purpose, fully equipped cell with appliances, a system for separated waste collection, and storage units placed all around.
This integrated kitchen module has been designed and sized for the traditional kitchen in the home, for a kitchen corner in a one-room flat, for a small kitchen in a residential hotel, for a suite in a regular hotel, and for a kitchen in the office; that is, for any situation (including a normal kitchen in a normal apartment) where you must deal with small areas and the resulting problems involving space distribution, dimensions, functions and utility systems.

The work of the students at Domus Academy and the prototypes shown at the Ansaldo stand are an important source of ideas for Veneta Cucine, which can apply them to help produce kitchens that suggest and interpret the needs of the consumer.

The project was also made possible by the involvement of Electrolux. The company has believed in our idea and made a substantial contribution to its success.

Also presented at the exhibit will be a publication on this study, which was produced by Francesco Morace, Dante Donegani and Giovanni Lauda.