alessi x c.p. company | salone del mobile

The clatter of workshop benches and the smell of industrial grease set the stage for a partnership that dragged the domestic kitchen out into the open air. For Milan Design Week 2026, Alessi and C.P. Company ditched the wall between kitchenware and urban uniforms. Inspired by the factory environment, the project looks at how manual skill and technical memory turn basic gestures into something far more interesting. Every idea begins with a coffee, whether brewed in the Alessi headquarters in Omegna, Piedmont, or a design studio in Bologna, marking the moment a prototype starts to take shape. Adopting Umberto Eco’s philosophy of the ‘Open Work,’ the collection treats neither a jacket nor a coffee pot as a finished entity until a human hand actually interacts with it. Richard Sapper’s iconic 1979 espresso maker – the first object Alessi ever put in the MoMA – was reimagined in a black PVD finish, limited to just 999 numbered pieces. Manual sandblasting gave the metal a visual depth that shifts as it ages, much like the famous garment-dyeing techniques pioneered by Massimo Osti. Jean Nouvel’s mugs and Enzo Mari’s 1961 Arran tray received the same treatment, creating surfaces that evolve and “weather” the... Read more » The post alessi x c.p. company | salone del mobile appeared first on Schön! Magazine.