Welcome to the special “20th Anniversary” section of Top Yacht Design. Here we present to you, day by day, the best stories, yachts, characters we have covered in these 20 years of Top Yacht Design, from 2006 to the present day.
Taken from Top Yacht Design no. 9/2017 pp. 44-49.
The Next Kitchen
Alberto Minotti talks about his galley concept and solutions that will prove revolutionary for yachts.
“Could we stop a minute, please? I’d like to take a shot of that shape by the road. Can you see how clean the line is? It’s given me an idea.. .”. Thus began our meeting with Alberto Minotti as we made our way into the courtyard of the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan. We quickly realised that this was typical Minotti because the artistic director of the Asso Group, to minotticucine and Maistri belong, is constantly assaulted by ideas.
The minotticucine range is, of course, famous for its block-like stone kitchens which are the product of Minotti’s own unique style. “I like to call it Mediterranean minimalism,” he explains. “Everything we produce can be traced back to pure, warm forms: we never go for cold stone. We use stone with warm colours that look good in a home and lend it warmth.” This creates visual silence: the more ornamentation is removed from a home’s interior, the more space is created for the people that live in it.
When devoid of ornamentation, design produces a visual silence that in turn generates sense of peaceful quiet. A formal purity that induces visual relaxation as well as everything else- we are normally constantly bombarded with colours, styles and fashions because as Minotti observes: “Our eyes need peace too.” Hence minotticucine kitchens are monochrome and, if at all possible, single material with stone as the first choice. “The single colour approach allows people that come in contact with the kitchen to let their own subjectivity run free, using a different colour for an accessory that can be moved, transformed or replaced. The container, however, has to remain neutral and then people can infuse it with their own personality.”
A minotticucine kitchen will be as perfectly at home aboard a megayacht as in a domestic setting, even if made from a seemingly heavy material like marble. “Man has been working with stone for millennia and today we use high-tech machines that allow us to cut it to thicknesses of just 4 mm so it’s a lot lighter.” The whole concept of the galley has evolved aboard megayachts too: initially they were considered service areas but now they are increasing including a table for informal family meals with owners often wanting to cook themselves too.
“This change introduced a much more focused aesthetic and attention to that space than was previously the case,” continues the art director. “Thanks to how fast and globalised communication has become, this minimalist kitchen concept is now catching on in nations that previous would have demanded a more sumptuous style. They are getting the spirit of subtraction and letting go of the urge to be opulent through ornamentation. A page is being turned at last. So people are saying no to everything on show and yes to monoblock kitchens that still have all the essentials but in hideaway form.” Uniformity goes hand in glove with coherency, formal and otherwise. Alberto Minotti uses different types of materials but only for purposes that suit them.
“I like using what nature gives us and turning it into a material – like stone, leather and metal – but I don’t think you can imitate nature. You mustn’t recreate the effect of one material using another. You have to allow the true nature of each material to emerge and not bend it to other ends. To get a result that will stand the test of time, you sometimes have to go back hundreds of years. If you want to create a product that will still look contemporary in 30 years’ time, how better than to choose a material that was already around 500 years ago?”
So what does the future hold? What is Minotti’s own dream kitchen? “I would like a kitchen that isn’t there. I’d be intrigued to custom-design it for a yacht as they fascinate me greatly. Designing a galley that pops out when it’s needed and then disappears when free space is required, would be fascinating. You might put a slab in the middle of the saloon floor and when you hit a button, a parallelepiped would pop up and become a kitchen. Then once you’d finished with it, it would slide back down into the floor. Or it could come down from above or out from a wall. Equally, it could be set up on a raft-tender so that you could cook and eat in a small group with all the privacy you needed but still connected to the main yacht. In that instance, the kitchen unit would have to be made from anodised aluminium to avoid problems with salt, sea and humidity. Or I’d invent a new material. But I’d need an enlightened owner or yard looking for a very exclusive minotticucine galley, a total once-off solution, as unique as a work of art. Sounds like a gauntlet being thrown down to us. Any takers out there?
by Gaia Grassi – Photo Giovanni Malgarini
