With the Swatch project, Josefina Colombero, Franco Nabor and Rima Nafouj won the second edition of “Conviviality 4 Kitchen and Modern Living”, the international workshop of the “Industrial Design for Architecture” Master’s Degree (Polytechnic of Milan and POLI.design), which combines the skills of the industrial design with the architecture, passing through the study of the technology of products and materials and the evolution of the cultural and social habits. The initiative has been realized in collaboration with Frigo2000 (where the final event took place, during which the winning project was awarded) and Abimis. The future of the domestic kitchen and the habits of its protagonists were the founding themes of the workshop: Venere Ferraro, teacher of the master with Federico Elli and Riccardo Negri, gave a precise theme to the students by coupling three types of protagonists to three types of spaces (the chef of a private yacht, the food blogger in an outdoor kitchen and the aspiring chef in his home kitchen). Three typical situations for as many spaces to be designed following the attitudes and needs of the protagonists, but also with the technologies and skills made available by Frigo2000 and Abimis. The jury of experts (architects, a designer and a chef) selected the winning project: Swatch, the kitchen designed for the food blogger. The other competing projects were Penelope (the kitchen for the yacht) and C-ater (the kitchen for the aspiring chef). These projects are characterized by: fluidity of movements; details that allow to open doors, surfaces and objects, and that allow to lock them at the same time; materials that adapt to the actions of the cooks; refrigerators with transparent closures that allow to see and expose at the same time; hobs that are integrated and aspire. The jury has established that Swatch is the project that most respects the synthesis of technology and tradition, in which tradition is the love for cooking and technology is the use of innovative instruments and advanced architectural materials for designing.
