Design stories

The kitchen for cooking and the kitchen for living.
In the 1980s, Gerd Bulthaup, the founder’s son, took over the reins of the company, and it was under his direction that Bulthaup made the leap in quality that would have transformed it into the undisputed leader in the premium kitchen sector. Gerd Bulthaup, passionate about architecture, Bauhaus philosophy and timeless design, collaborated with Otl Aicher, one of the most important and successful designers in Germany, to analyze the act of cooking and determine its cultural, ergonomic and functional components.
Gerd commissioned Aicher to create a new corporate identity for the company, but Aicher thought that a corporate identity was only truly effective when it reflected the vision and way of working of a company, so he decided to study the world of cooking thoroughly.
For twelve months, Aicher visited numerous renowned restaurants and tasted the menus of Europe. However, he was not only interested in the dishes themselves, but rather in the way of preparation, organization and functionality of the different kitchens.
He went through all the cooking utensils, asked professional chefs if they preferred gas or electric stoves, wanted to know if they would stack or hang pots and pans and measure the height of their stoves, cabinets and countertops. Has become a best seller and a point of reference for kitchen designers and kitchen lovers in general. The result of this collaboration eventually materialized in Aicher’s classic book “The Kitchen for Cooking”.
“Designers who don’t cook shouldn’t be entrusted with the design of kitchens.” Otl Aicher, 1982
The joint effort of these two visionaries has led to highly innovative developments such as the Bulthaup b system, launched in 1984 – a kitchen furniture system based on the re-evaluation of work done in the kitchen with a primary focus on ergonomics – and the workbench. KWB, since 1988 – An independent functional unit that has brought together all essential work areas in one element with an ergonomic design.
Aicher designed a new logo for the company, but also changed Bulthaup’s design in such a way as to become a reference for kitchen design and transformed the kitchen into a living space shared by all the inhabitants of a house. Ultimately, Aicher’s goal was to bring family life and conversation back to the kitchen and have a “kitchen for living” instead of a “kitchen for cooking”.

Formal perfection, decisive lines and poetic creative freedom: these are the unmistakable characteristics of the projects by the French brothers Ronan (1971) and Erwan Bouroullec (1976). Bouroullecs combine essential and poetic forms with innovative materials and techniques that respect materials.
Now in the firmament of the most famous designers in the world, they have deliberately kept their studio small, with only six employees. In this way, says Ronan – the older brother – they can focus intensely on every aspect of their creations: from freehand sketching to the pursuit of color. “The only good day for me is when I’m in front of my desk with paper, drawing or making models,” says Ronan. “I hate going to meetings. I don’t want to travel that much. I just want to search and concentrate. ” Compare the work of a designer with those of other contemporary fields of expression: “An Eames chair is like a Beatles song”. Like timeless tracks that never age, no matter how many times you listen to them, great design should have “a certain lightness, a certain elegance”.
The two brothers They began working together in 1998, opening their studio in Paris, after completing their studies at the École supérieure des Arts décoratifs in Paris and the École nationale supérieure des Arts in Cergy. They have been working together for about fifteen years, linked by the meticulousness of their work and the contribution of their distinct personalities. In 1997 they were discovered by Cappellini, who entrusted them with the first industrial design works. Hence the meeting with Rolf Felhbaum, president of Vitra – for whom they have never stopped designing masterpieces since then – and with Issey Miyake, for the design of the boutique for his new “A-Poc” line. Since then they have worked – and still work – with Artek, Hay, Alessi, Cappellini, Samsung, Flos, Kvadrat, Kartell, Ligne Roset, Established & Sons, Mutina, Nani Marquina, Glas Italia, Magis, Iittala, Mattiazzi and many others. Their work has covered many sectors ranging from the design of small objects such as jewelry to the setting up of spaces and architecture, from crafts to industrial scale, from drawings to videos and photography. The Bouroullecs also carry out an experimental activity in parallel with Gallery Kreo, which is essential for the development of their work. The drawings by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec are part of permanent collections of selected international museums such as the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Center Pompidou and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Design Museum in London and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Villa Mairea is a country residence built by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, one of the great masters of the 1900s, in Noormarkku, Finland, between 1937 and 1940 for Harry and Maire Gullichsen, a wealthy couple and members of the Ahlström family. who asked Aalto to consider it “an experimental house”.
Aalto seems to have treated the house as an opportunity to bring together all the issues that had worried him in his work up to that point, but had not been able to include them in the real buildings.
The L-shaped plan defines a semi-private area on one side and a more public and receptive one on the other. The lawn and swimming pool are located in the cavity of the L, with a series of rooms oriented in this direction. The horizontal and door overhang in the overall composition meets the flat expanses of the landscape and the curves of the pool lines embrace the topography of the surrounding forest.
In contrast to these devices that give a certain organic softness to the lines, there is the main facade, with a more rigid and formal aspect. There is also a canopy that is repeated in the garden with a pergola that incorporates the vocabulary of the whole, with studs, clapboards and fasteners with great attention to detail. The interiors of Villa Mairea subtly play with wood, stone and brick. The spaces vary in size, ranging from very generous spaces to the very private ones of a cabin.
“The concept of form associated with the architecture of this building is included in the deliberate connection attempted here with modern painting and with the landscape” – Alvar Aalto.
The entrance opens into a small upper atrium, from which another door leads into an open room positioned four steps below the main level: you enter in line with the dining table, but the axiality is undermined by the asymmetry of a screen of wooden poles – an organic reference to Finnish – and an independent wall, which together defines an informal antechamber between the living room and the dining room.
The corner of the low wall is set by the corner of the white plastered fireplace in the opposite diagonal, which becomes the natural center of attention when climbing the step into the living room. Similar diagonal relationships are established between Harry Gullichsen’s library / private study and the “winter garden” (which Maire used to arrange flowers and from which a staircase leads directly to her study), and between the main staircase and the illuminated by the sun in the living room, where the eyes are drawn as you emerge from behind the rationalized “forest” that screens the stairs.

Among the Danish furniture designers, Hans J. Wegner (1914-2007) is considered one of the most creative, innovative and prolific. Often referred to as the master of the chair, Wegner has signed nearly 550 projects in his life, many of which are considered masterpieces. His iconic Wishbone Chair is probably the best known and has been in continuous production since 1950.
Wegner was part of the spectacular generation that created what is now called the “Golden Age” of modern Danish design. “Many foreigners have asked me how we created the Danish style,” Wegner once said. “And I replied that it was a continuous process of purification and simplification: reducing to the simplest possible design of four legs, a seat and a backrest and an armrest combined”.
The son of a shoemaker, Wegner was born in 1914 in Tønder, a city in southern Denmark. He began his apprenticeship with the Danish master cabinetmaker H. F. Stahlberg when he was only 14 years old. Later, he moved to Copenhagen and attended the School of Arts and Crafts from 1936 to 1938 before starting as a furniture designer.
In 1938, Wegner was approached by architects and designers Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller and began designing furniture for Aarhus’s new town hall. Around the same time, Wegner began collaborating with master cabinetmaker Johannes Hansen, who was an engine in bringing the new furniture design to the Danish public at the Copenhagen Guild of Cabinetmakers Exhibitions.
The heart of Wegner’s legacy is his attention to show the interior soul of the furniture through a simple and functional exterior. Wegner’s background as a cabinetmaker allowed him to fully understand how to integrate rigorous woodworking techniques with exquisite shapes. His aesthetic was also based on a deep respect for wood and its characteristics and on a great curiosity for other natural materials that allowed him to bring an organic and natural softness to formalist minimalism.
Wegner founded his design studio in 1943 and created a series of lightweight chairs for Carl Hansen & Søn from 1949 to 1968, including the Wishbone Chair, which has been in production at Carl Hansen & Søn ever since.
Wegner is considered to be one of the most famous and creative Danish furniture designers. He has received numerous design awards, including the Lunning Prize in 1951, the Milan Triennale Grand Prix in 1951, the Eckersberg Medal of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1956, the Prince Eugen Medal in Sweden in 1961, the Danish for furniture in 1980, the CF Hansen medal in 1982 and the eighth international design award in 1997. In 1959 he was named Honorary Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts in London, in 1995 he became an honorary member of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1995, and was awarded the Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art in 1997.
Almost every major design museum in the world, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen to Die Neue Sammlung in Munich, exhibit his works. Hans J. Wegner died in Denmark in January 2007 at the age of 92.

The Eames House was initially born as a response to the appeal of the Arts & Architecture magazine which in 1945 launched a challenge with its “Case Study House Project”: to imagine homes suitable for the post-war lifestyle. Other architects and designers such as Richard Neutra or Eero Saarinen proposed their plans. The Eames porposal was then called Bridge House. It was published as Case Study House #8. They wanted to respond to the needs of a couple who lived and worked together. And together Ray and Charles Eames always worked, drawing on each other’s inclinations and abilities, often even using their own language in which Ray’s sentences were completed by Charles or vice versa, convinced as they were that the ability to connect and collaborating with other individuals with the same mindset and the same goals bring freshness, creativity and new resources into the work.
In fact, the Eames also often collaborated with other innovators such as the inventor of the geodesic dome Buckminster Fuller, the designer Alexander Girard or the photographer Alex Funke, and to greatly influence not only design, but ways of life. Their philosophy and working method can in fact be summarized by some quotes used by the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, which dedicated a major traveling exhibition to the Eames that debuted last May at the museum’s headquarters in Michigan.
For the Eames, in fact, design could not and should never be an exercise based in style. Instead, it had to offer concrete solutions to problems: the premise of what we now call “design thinking” and also apply to other fields: “design is a method of action. We must always consider the working method to solve problems rather than the physical appearance of the result. Good design is the expression of a solved problem “. Their method was to start from “a pure place” like passion (“always and only work on things you believe in”), seek help in collaborating with others, pay great attention to the initial stages of preparation so as to allow a high level improvisation in the creative phase and, above all, considering multiple solutions by observing the problem from different angles: that is iteration. Repeat, repeat and then repeat process and solutions again until you are sure that you have arrived at the best one, as happened in 1940 when they were faced with the challenge of serially producing preformed curved plywood shells for the MoMa chairs, and that in later it was also used for fiberglass models.
The Eames House in Los Angeles that can be visited, today did not completely follow the indications of the Bridge House, which involved a construction “on stilts” on the ocean. The foundations were instead laid parallel to the hillside with a concrete retaining wall almost 100 meters long. The structure consists of two parallelepipeds of steel two floors high, connected by a courtyard with a brick floor and potted plants. On the exterior facade of the house, which has large floor-to-ceiling windows that create a fluid connection between interior and exterior, red, blue and gold panels stand out. The building that housed the studio today is the headquarters of the Eames Foundation, which together with the GettyConservation Institute is dedicating enormous resources to preserving the home for future generations (“The 250 Year Project”), researching the most suitable materials for necessary repairs without losing sight of the goal of keeping the house in the conditions in which the owners lived: not an easy undertaking because only industrial materials were used for both buildings, many of which no longer in production.
An example for all: the slightly curved railing that completes the spiral ladder leading to the second floor of the house was found by Ray in a catalog of ships! But the effort of the foundation is evident even in the smallest details: both the house and the Eames’ studio house the collections of objects, carpets and folk art that Ray and Charles loved to buy during their travels, and the vases are still filled with flowers and Ray’s favorite plants.