The Kitchen According to Students at the Accademia Italiana

The encounter between education and industry produced some interesting results: special thanks to the second year students of Interior and Product Design for their stimulating suggestions.

Last autumn, at the beginning of the school year, we asked second year students of Interior and Product Design at the Accademia Italiana in Rome, one of the leading private higher education institutions in Europe, to define a vision for the kitchen of the future

The 150-hour long project was developed during the Design 2 and Model Making, and partly during, Graphic Design and Digital Modelling Techniques courses. Our first thanks go to all the teachers for their collaboration.

Our praise goes out to the students, divided into thirteen groups, for getting involved and actively participating in a series of meetings with Doimo Cucine representatives, aimed at jointly reviewing the progress of the students’ work before the official presentation. It was particularly interesting to see how they interpreted the assigned briefs with creativity and design skills, and to witness their openness to guidance intent on enhancing their design capabilities.

The work developed by these young students of the Accademia Italiana offered thought-provoking ideas, and demonstrated the value of encouraging dialogue between the worlds of education and industry. The projects focused on three categories, with a winning group selected in each:

• a kitchen for people with disabilities, inspired by the knowledge that in Europe some 50 million people (about one in six), aged between 16 and 64, live with a permanent health condition or disability (source: Catas)
• an outdoor kitchen, now an essential element for those who love outdoor living and have a garden or large terrace, but a challenging product in terms of materials and technologies, as it must withstand all weather conditions
• an ecological kitchen, which naturally aligns with the choices made by Doimo Cucine regarding safety, sustainability and consumer well-being, and which must consider the entire life cycle of a product, from manufacturing to disposal.

We consider these forms of collaboration to be of great value: for the company, which has the opportunity to view its work from different perspectives and with fresh eyes; and for the students, offered the chance to engage with real-world topics and teams from the world of industry.