Exploring Eurocucina 2018 in Milan, Italy

In April, I was part of the Modenus DesignHounds trip to Salone del Mobile in Milan, Italy. This was my first time attending this event and from the hundreds of exhibitors at the fairgrounds for both Eurocucina and the International Bath Exhibition to the city, I now understand why this is considered the design world’s biggest event of the year.

NKBA Insiders Elle Millard and Grace Jeffers at Eurocucina 2018

Before arriving in Milan, I was invited to spend a few days with ROHL Faucets & Fixtures visiting several of their Italian manufacturers.

Water as an Act of Ablution

Being taken to Lago d’Orta by ROHL was indeed an exotic treat for which I am grateful. Imagine a lake with a two-thousand-year-old cloister in the center. In the morning we would wake to the sound of the bells calling the sisters to prayer. On the shores of the lake are dozens of faucet manufacturers designing and manufacturing tools to deliver precious water in our hands. In religious orders, washing is an act of purification with both a spiritual and a practical purpose. Yards away from the nuns faucet makers give us products that treat water with almost the same reverence and I found this poetic.

Radical Matters

Materials & making for our supernatural future – When we arrived in Milan, I attended some of the talks that were hosted by FranklinTill and Dutch Invertuals. Both of these organizations lead one aspect of the avant-garde of materials research: design in the Anthropocene. Most companies take raw materials extracted from the earth and convert them into a product. This model will soon die as we, as a species, consume the last raw materials. Where do we go from here? In the future, we will mine waste as a raw material and this was the overarching topic of conversation here.