Beyond being a designer, Giulio Iacchetti is a passionate collector. His curiosity drives him to gather the various iterations of an object he loves, marveling each time at how, given the same design brief, numerous designers manage to generate countless variations. Among his collections, that of coffee makers has a particular slant: all the variations are designed by great architects. Hence, the name of an exhibition, ‘Le Caffettiere dei Maestri,’ which opened on April 15th at Nuvola Lavazza and will remain there until September, complemented by a small book published by Corraini.
Indeed, for Iacchetti, the coffee maker embodies ritual, symbolism, and a perfect blend of form and function. Among all the objects a home – especially an Italian home – might contain, the coffee maker is the central object of a ritual, “a bit like the chalice for Mass in church,” Iacchetti says. It’s a secular ritual, of course: if a welcome guest arrives, coffee is made; if there’s news that causes a little apprehension, to ease the tension, coffee is made. Coffee and its preparation are resorted to during life’s pivotal moments to celebrate, welcome, or reflect, as well as in daily life. The core is its preparation, which, especially with the moka pot, requires a process that Italians know well, are fond of, and are very proud of.
From childhood, Giulio Iacchetti was fascinated by the coffee maker, which he saw as a mysterious and somewhat dangerous object. He recalls the anticipation of being able to prepare it, a rite of passage that marked growing up. For him, modernity began at home when a Bialetti moka pot arrived, retiring the previous ‘napoletana’ coffee maker, which required more complex handling: you had to flip it over the moment the puff of steam emerged, and then you had to let the liquid percolate through the coffee grounds by inverting the coffee maker. He remained fond of that moka pot, caring for and repairing it. Years later, he sadly discovered his mother had thrown it away. This episode strengthened his conviction that coffee makers represent a peculiar design moment, sparking the idea for a collection.
Not a collection of anonymous coffee makers, but all designed by great architects. Many, in fact, have tried their hand over the years at designing a coffee maker. We don’t quite know why this domestic object is so present in the imagination of architects, but many of them have challenged themselves, finding it a topical object, on par with a chair or a door handle. Mendini wrote in 1979: “The coffee maker is not just an object, a machine; it is an architecture in itself. Every great architect has attempted its design. One aspires to build a coffee maker just as, before dying, one would want to build a tower.” It seems architects interpret the coffee maker as a small piece of domestic architecture, a project achievable even without major clients. The Bialetti coffee maker, a milestone in Iacchetti’s biography, indeed marked a before and after in how coffee is made in Italy. It’s not just a formal innovation, but a formidable invention: water rising, propelled by steam, through the filter and coffee grounds. This invention laid the groundwork for coffee maker design, with the filter as the central ‘hardware’ around which each architect could interpret the object, both as technology and as aesthetics.
In the history of coffee makers, 1979 was a key year: two figures of extreme importance in Italian design tackled this object. That year, Marco Zanuso was commissioned by Lavazza to design the Carmencita. Not a mere gadget, but an object that evoked tradition (like the handle of Neapolitan coffee makers) and the Carosello character, an object that achieved great success. The same year, Richard Sapper, a student of Zanuso, went to Alessi, invited by Alberto Alessi under the direction of Ettore Sottsass. Sapper, being the technician he was, designed a coffee maker that could be opened and closed with one hand, with a wide base to maximize contact with the heat source. A highly technical object that extolled the functionalist principles of his beloved Ulm School. Both projects, despite their different approaches, were successful.
Many other designers, however, were obsessed with the polygon, influenced by the memory of the Bialetti. Examples include the coffee makers by Michael Anastasiades and Mario Trimarchi for Alessi, by Ferdinand Porsche for Barazzoni, and Alessandro Mendini‘s Moka Alessi from 2011. Other coffee makers reflect a personal design approach: like Michele De Lucchi’s Pulcina, which echoes his architectures made of jagged and layered surfaces.
The fact that Giulio Iacchetti owns them all is just one of his obsessions.
