Mia Cucina

At Milan Design Week, Gaggenau unveiled a much-anticipated kitchen collection. Sven Schnee, Head of Global Brand Gaggenau, spoke to BlackBook in Italy about what this means for the Indian market

- Malvika Sah

It was while walking idly across the cobblestoned streets of Milan—bursting with vintage boutiques and outlets of every luxury label in the world—that I accidently came across Panasonic’s mammoth installation. Designed like a water-drop pavilion, it offered visitors the chance to breathe the cleanest air in Milan; a bid to show off their latest air-conditioning technology.

It wasn’t set-up in a luxury mall or at an airy store, but in the magnificent courtyard of Pinacoteca de Brera. Home of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, the structure boasts one of the foremost collections of Renaissance paintings in Italy. Those stimulating—and rather dramatic—five minutes inside a closed dome, breathing the purest air, even as vivid lighting and music intensified the sense of drama, gave me the perfect preview of what to expect at the Milan Design Week, set for a formal launch the next day.

Held annually and hailed as the world’s top design event, Milan Design Week is a one-of-its-kind programme of innovation and appointments. This year, it hosted more than 300,000 visitors from 165 countries. 2018 was also the 22nd edition of the biennial EuroCucina exhibition, which determines the trends for kitchens of the future. Sprawling over 22,000 square meters, EuroCucina hosted over 117 companies this year.

Here, the ‘Gaggenau Home’ collection made its debut—marked as one of the biggest launches at EuroCucina 2018. The German brand is a manufacturer of high-quality home appliances and entered the Indian market in January this year.