by Claudia Simone Hoff, 14.05.2008
What do Joe Colombo, Antonio Citterio , Norbert Wangen and Piero Lissoni have in common? Well, all four designers have designed kitchens for the Italian kitchen and bathroom manufacturer Boffi. Not just ordinary kitchens, no. They are kitchens that have written design history. What this (kitchen) history is all about is exciting and needs to be told.
If you like to eat spaghetti, risotto or polenta, you can prepare them in style in an Italian kitchen. In this context, Boffi does not see the house as a simple stringing together of individual functional spaces, but sees the living space as a whole, as a "liquid space" - like flowing water that is always in motion, a continuum of spaces. These "liquid spaces" include in particular the kitchen, which in its function as a communication nucleus merges into the living space, but also the bathroom, which can also be expanded, for example into a dressing room or private wellness temple.
Boffi - the manufacturer of luxury kitchens and bathrooms, founded in 1934 by Piero Boffi, initially produced kitchen furniture by hand in a carpentry workshop. After the Second World War, Piero's sons Dino, Pier Ugo and Paolo took over the company and built a first factory in 1947. Here they found themselves in a promising cultural environment, as Milan had been the center of Italian design since 1945 at the latest. Visionary entrepreneurs, architects, designers and artists met there. Together they developed innovative projects and products: Interesting pairings of designers and entrepreneurs emerged, just think of Gio Ponti/Vico Magistretti and Cesare Cassina, Ettore Sotsass and Adriano/Roberto Olivetti or Luigi Massoni and Dino Boffi. It was also Dino Boffi who had the idea of collaborating with architects and designers. This has resulted in an exciting (corporate) history centered around innovative design ideas, combined with products that were and still are far ahead of their time. This included kitchen and bath elements that were sophisticated in terms of materials and design, as well as cooperation with design institutions such as museums or the Italian architecture magazine "Domus".
The 1950s saw the emergence of the idea of the "American kitchen," which combined kitchen and living space. The first Boffi kitchen to embrace this idea was the "C" system designed by architects Sergio Asti and Sergio Favre, a first in the series of many aesthetic experiments to follow. "C" stood for "Color" and describes the fundamental aesthetic element of this kitchen: color. Massoni worked for Boffi as a designer and art director from the 1960s to 1985, and was instrumental in the company's current image. He also designed Boffi's first modular kitchen and bathroom systems.
In the early 1960s, designers began to create kitchens that were no longer tied to a specific space, i.e. could be set up flexibly. Joe Colombo's "Minikitchen" from 1963 is an exemplary example of this trend, which was taken up about ten years later by Luigi Collani with the "Kugelküche" designed for the German manufacturer Poggenpohl. Boffi's "Minikitchen" can still be placed anywhere there is an electrical outlet, and it looks cooler than ever. Joe Colombo, who studied fine art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, turned to architecture and industrial design after beginnings as a painter and opened his own studio in 1961. Boffi recently relaunched his "Minikitchen" and now manufactures it in the contemporary material Corian. In the smallest of spaces, this rolling cube offers three essential functions: Cooking facility, work surface, food storage in the refrigerator and storage function for kitchen utensils, only a water point must be provided separately. The "Minikitchen" fits seamlessly into Colombo's concept of furnishing the space with dynamic and flexible elements. The design, still amazing today, won a gold medal at the 13th Triennale in Milan in 1964.
Today Piero Lissoni, who has been with the company since 1986, is the art director in charge at Boffi. He not only designs new kitchen and bathroom products at regular intervals, but is also responsible for the company's entire corporate design. In doing so, he works closely with Roberto Gavazzi, who has managed the company with Piero Boffi since 1989. Boffi positions itself with a two-pronged corporate strategy: in addition to the design of new products and the redesign of classics, as well as the constant technical and design optimization, the exhibition and presentation of the product range and corporate communication play a decisive role. This includes work on the graphic design as well as on the concept of the showrooms. These are not just simple showrooms for the company's products, but demonstrate the entire universe of the Italian manufacturer far beyond the products: a lifestyle is celebrated here. For example, the accessories are selected very specifically - in some cases personally by the store managers - at flea markets, and with their ethnic look they sometimes contrast with the clean kitchens, bringing a unique touch to the showrooms. Mass-produced accessories like in the showrooms of other kitchen manufacturers are not to be found here.
Lissoni has made Boffi a manufacturer that, in addition to kitchens, also produces thoughtfully designed bathroom systems with design appeal. Bathroom furniture and the design of bathrooms were still in a kind of Sleeping Beauty slumber until the 1990s. Boffi was far ahead of the trend in the industry. The company's innovation lay in its novel approach to the element of water and the creation of spaces that were assigned a significance far beyond the unspeakable "wet rooms". The aspect of sensuality in materials and the generosity of proportions played an important role. An example of this design concept is the "Zone" bathroom system designed by Lissoni, as well as the tub, sink and cabinets made of transparent float glass.
Today's kitchen is not just for cooking, it is above all a space for communication, something that Otl Aicher had already recognized. And it is precisely here that Boffi has occupied a niche: High-quality crafted kitchens that merge into the living space. Because one thing is clear: kitchen and living space are no longer two separate entities. For example, the worktops of the multi-award-winning "Table System" designed by Piero Lissoni can be placed either individually as a kitchen island or in combination with other elements as a peninsula in the room. And the monolithic kitchen blocks "k11 + k12" and "k 2" by German designer Norbert Wangen also look good in the eat-in kitchen. In addition, these kitchens show that models from Boffi can be combined with each other. At the "Salone del Mobile" furniture fair, which took place in Milan in April 2008, Boffi was again in a mood for experimentation: the company presented the "duemilaotto" kitchen system designed by Piero Lissoni, in which natural materials play a special role: untreated wood, stone or ceramics for the countertops in combination with handmade tiles for vertical surfaces and walls. One can be curious about what is still to come.
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