Hasta La Ideas

In this previously unpublished movie filmed by Dezeen, Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola explains why she rejected the “very masculine” style of kitchen showrooms to design a retail space for kitchen appliance brand Scholtès.

Kitchen showrooms tend to be built to a “monumental” scale and dominated by heavy marble and stone, says Urquiola, who wanted instead to create a “convivial” space for Scholtès.

“Normally these kind of companies introduce the appliances inside a fake kitchen, and I disagree with that,” says Urquiola, who divided the space into a showroom upstairs and a more informal space downstairs, which hosts a programme of cookery classes and parties. “I like that they can go to a showroom that has a kind of life, that can perform, but is a place where the items are related.”

“We have to have more adaptable things,” she continues. “Our apartments are not going to grow, and there are going to be a lot of people moving to the city. In the city, the problem is always the space.

“I don’t think big. For me it’s not a monumental place, it’s a place where you can be together in some way,” she concludes.

The showroom opened in October 2011 but was closed a few weeks later when Scholtès decided to pull out of the UK market. Urquiola’s interior in still in place, now used as the Hotpoint Design Centre.

Dezeen previously teamed up with Scholtès to report on the cross-pollination between the worlds of food and design, filming a series of movies with designers including Philippe Starck, Gitta Gschwendtner and Kiki van Eijk.

Other designs by Urquiola we’ve featured recently include a collection of ice cream-coloured poufs and rugs and a quilted leaf-patterned sofa – see all designs by Patricia Urquiola.

The post “Kitchen design should be less
masculine” – Patricia Urquiola appeared first on Dezeen.