Designer and art director Serena Confalonieri is known for her identifying aesthetic which is all together graphic, colorful, and emotional. In one of her latest projects, she brings her design sense to Zdora, a project and installation created in collaboration with Very Simple Kitchen and La Pietra Compattata. Zdora, the dialectal word for “sfogline” in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy where Very Simple Kitchen and La Pietra Compattata are based, refers to the Italian women who prepare the dough by hand to make fresh pasta for Sunday lunch, typically enjoyed on a traditional checkered tablecloth. That textile has now been translated to the kitchen walls, table, and seating tops.
The surfaces by La Pietra Compattata are made of exclusively natural raw materials, including porphyry, quartz, and granite, that have been recovered from processed stones, ground into a mixture, and compacted into a hard material by pressing. Confalonieri curated perfect color palettes for the project, ones that match the color variations proposed by Very Simple Kitchen.
On the tables, the pattern imitates the look of the inspirational tablecloth by falling over the edges on the short sides. The chairs simply showcase the pattern on its surface tops. For the kitchen, the pattern continues upwards to create a humble backsplash or a full wall mural. The resulting effect of all three elements in the same vignette is a modern interpretation of the colorful, Italian-inspired kitchen.
Photos by Serena Eller Vainicher.
