Friends: Studio DWA
The bond established between QuadroDesign and the designers who choose our brand and products for their projects, provides the occasion for a meeting with DWA Design Studio. Hosted by Frederik De Wachter and Alberto Artesani, we explore a corner of Nolo, an area north of Milan (North of Loreto to be exact, hence No-Lo), where the creativity and industriousness of many, locals and new arrivals alike, is consolidating as an emerging pole of the city, without erasing but integrating with the lively and multiform life of the neighbourhood.
The history of the building where the studio is located is also beautiful to tell and imagine: an open space born in the last century as a small cake factory. Here Giovanni Cova produced panettone and chocolate. Raw material and food sensations; materials and emotions in the world of design.
In fact, the DWA are particularly fond of researching and experimenting with building materials and materials from other fields, to be reinvented in new functions and combinations until they become the characterising element of a project.
In the name of the unpredictable and the surprise effect when working on a showcase or a site-specific event, of comfort when it is a private residence or a hotel. Complicit in this is the use of colour and light.
On the basis of these criteria, one seems to be able to liken the studio’s design to that of a house: in this case a pure and essential volume, even in the furnishings, with the soul of a former workshop well declared by the industrial windows, without overly invasive accents that would perhaps disturb the creative act. There is a different narrative when one enters the meeting area with the large meeting table and the kitchen, concealed behind a wall: here the focus is on material patterns and colours.
The kitchen is a bright, energetic green – with the sinuous detail of a handle created from recycled materials – on which the Idealaqua domestic filtration tap by QuadroDesign is installed, specifically article 383: a stainless steel tap, uniquely equipped with an aesthetically integrated diverter to activate, when needed, the activated carbon or membrane filter (or any other filtration method) for drinking water, to drink and treat food with the purest possible water.
In addition to the many ecological issues and economic implications of using Idealaqua, there is also an awareness of how design can bring value to everyday life. This is how functionality, interpreted in this particular sense by Quadrodesign, interprets the idea of comfort and attention to detail in the DWA designs and projects.