Quadro Design

Super

QuadroDesign, Bathroom Collection

We can say without fear of contradiction that the effort QuadroDesign makes

every day to reduce its environmental impact is driven by a sincere feel-

ing and not by a trivial marketing move. For us, as designers, it is a source of

great satisfaction to work with a brand that is aligned with contemporary

sensibilities in both image and content.

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The Calvi Brambilla studio moves fluidly between design and architecture working on different scales. What are the

challenges and most fascinating aspects of these two design approaches?

In a way, we are part of the old school: we move according to the principle that

the design method, once learnt, is applied to different scales, from the

spoon to the city, to use the slogan created by Ernesto Nathan Rogers. After

all, great masters of Italian design such as Magistretti or Zanuso were per-

fectly capable of handling different scales with enviable ease. Although we

do not pretend to compare ourselves to these great authors, the Milan

Polytechnic where we trained followed this commandment and it is natural

for us to work on projects both large and small.

Yours is a four-handed work based precisely on the duality of vision and approach. How would you define your —

almost 20-year — collaboration?

We are often asked what the secret is to maintaining a working and personal

relationship that has lasted so long: I would say that we are two comple-

mentary personalities; therefore, each of us makes a different contribution to

the project. Moreover, being two means forcing the other to always give the

best of himself. After all, we believe a lot in teamwork, and so we decided to

establish Calvi Brambilla and Partners in order to have the contribution of

younger professionals who also collaborate with us while maintaining a cer-

tain creative freshness.

How and when did you start working with QuadroDesign?

We started with a request from Enrico Magistro to design their booth for the

Milan trade fair in 2022: since then a relationship of esteem was born,

strongly motivated by a love of good design. In today's context,

QuadroDesign is one of the very rare realities moved by the desire to experi-

ment and interpret the spirit of our time: the ideal client for a designer.

QuadroDesign is a company that puts water at the centre, the protagonist and starting point of each of its projects.

How do you relate to this element, what does it mean to you?

Water is at the centre of many religions and philosophical systems: it is clear

to everyone the symbolic meaning attributed to it, regardless of the culture

it comes from. For a designer, therefore, designing with water means moving

with the attention due to an essential element. Stainless steel, the noble

material that perhaps most of all represents modernity, is particularly suited

to enhancing the preciousness of water.

In an interior design project, how important are spaces such as the kitchen or bathroom that must be able to com-

bine practicality and aesthetics?

There is no good design that does not know how to combine functionality and

aesthetics, even if, precisely because of the sacredness we attribute to

water and the ritual of washing, the symbolic aspect guides interior design.

Designing a bathroom, that is, a special environment where one gets un-

dressed and takes care of one's body, requires the designer's capacity for

identification and attention to detail. Similarly, the act of cooking can be

said to be so charged with meaning that, from our point of view, it requires a

special space that goes beyond pure functionality.

Your latest collection Super is inspired by the geometric figure of the squircle, which is declined in the knob and in

the other elements that characterise the entire bathroom range. What motivated you to choose this shape?

We started with the search for a shape that would allow the knob to be easily

gripped with the hand, hence an ergonomic design, but that would not

look like an object simply drawn according to its function. The squircle is a

geometric figure that we love because it looks like it was drawn freehand

but is governed by a mathematical function: not surprisingly, it is a shape that

is widely used in the design of physical interfaces such as keyboards.

What were the main aesthetic and functional challenges?

Stainless steel is an extraordinary material in terms of its durability and ap-

pearance, but it poses many technical limits in the creation of free forms.

In designing Super, therefore, we started precisely from an analysis of the

technical constraints in order to delimit the field of action within which we

could move. Once we had identified the Super rim as a design as a figure, we

declined the theme in the variants necessary to build a coherent family in

all its accessories. The minimalism and aesthetic cleanliness that character-

ises QuadroDesign products also had to be reflected in our series and so

there was a long process of refining the details conducted side by side with

the technical department.

What are the advantages of working with a company that is so attentive to sustainability and able to enhance the hu-

man factor, while always keeping its eye on innovation and the future?