A century of Molteni&C Kitchens

In 1926, in Marcallo con Casone, a small town near Milan, Angelo Garavaglia founded an artisanal workshop dedicated to producing sturdy furniture and practical kitchens – well-crafted pieces designed to last. At the time, the kitchen was not yet a social space In Italy: it was a closed, technical, and largely female environment. Across Europe, however, times were changing, and kitchens were changing with them.

That same year, the young Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky designed what would become an icon of the modern movement. The Frankfurt Kitchen was conceived for modern women who refused to devote all of their time to housework. Rational and meticulously measured, it eliminated every unnecessary gesture. A small yet radical revolution that transformed the kitchen into a functional space, Schütte-Lihotzky’s design broke new ground by drawing on earlier research by Catharine Beecher and Christine Frederick. As early as 1869, in The American Woman’s Home, Beecher and her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe had described the kitchen as an optimised environment: shelves and storage lining the walls, dedicated zones for food preservation, carefully studied worktop heights, and a clear separation between cooking and preparation areas.

Such vision anticipated the modern kitchen by decades: rational, efficient, modular. Frederick’s ideas influenced not only American architects and designers, but also European kitchens, inspiring projects such as Schütte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt Kitchen and, as a consequence, Bottoni’s kitchen for the Casa Elettrica by Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini, in addition to other Italian companies, who were increasingly interested in turning the kitchen into a fully-fledged architectural project.

After the Second World War, reconstruction placed the home once again at the centre of design. Manufacturers were called upon to produce well-made furnishings on a large scale and, as such, Garavaglia’s company resumed its growth: in 1946 a sawmill was added to process raw timber, and his eldest sons joined the business, forming Angelo Garavaglia e figli, fabbrica mobili. Production shifted decisively toward serial manufacturing of wardrobes and kitchens, supported by new technologies and machinery.

The kitchen itself evolved from a purely operational space into a living environment open to the rest of the home. For the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, designed by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand created a compact kitchen model: functional, carefully proportioned yet still open. Conceived for collective housing, the kitchen was no longer just a place to prepare meals, but a microcosm interacting with the entire domestic setting. The serving hatch of the 20s and 30s evolved, walls disappeared, and cooking became a shared and collaborative act. Perriand’s vision – both rational and poetic – left a lasting mark worldwide. Alvar Aalto, in his single-family houses, similarly merged the living room with the food preparation area, paying close attention to light and materials. In Germany, by contrast, the legacy of the Frankfurt Kitchen led to increasingly standardised models, reflecting an almost engineering-driven approach to movement and workflow.

By the 1960s and 1970s, the kitchen was firmly serially-produced. It opened up, embraced colour and technology, and absorbed influences from pop aesthetics and newly available materials. Modularity and flexibility became key concepts, interiors drifted away from strict architectural constraints, and avant-garde movements shaped visions of the future. Joe Colombo’s Total Furnishing Unit, for example, redefined space without partitions, placing human activity at the centre.

By then, Angelo Garavaglia e figli was ready to take the leap. In 1972, driven by Gaetano Garavaglia, the DADA brand was born. The kitchen was at its core: high-end; serially produced; designed by architects and designers such as Angelo Cortesi, Georges Coslin, and Giovanni Offredi; and communicated through striking imagery by graphic innovators including Italo Lupi and Amilcare Ponchielli.

Through the juxtaposition of elements and the addition of shelves or further counters, functions were articulated simply, flexibly, and immediately, generating unprecedented compositions of materials and logic.

For the Albion Riverside apartments in London, Dada created Place with Foster + Partners: a kitchen designed for “an informal environment where family and friends can be together.” By the 2000s, the kitchen was no longer just about cooking and eating – it was also a place to read, work, socialise, and relax. The rise of cooking-focused TV shows – culminating in the renowned MasterChef – also profoundly changed perceptions of the kitchen. In 2008, ARMANI/Dada was launched together with Giorgio Armani, creating a brand inspired by the informal yet refined atmosphere of a dinner invitation with a chef. Here, the kitchen took centre stage as a space around which guests gather. Dada not only concealed doors but reinterpreted the “open kitchen”, allowing functions to disappear beneath the worktop: elegance and minimalism achieved through discreet, non-invasive technology.

Main Image: Physis kitchen designed by Vincent Van Duysen