From automotive to kitchen design: Carlo Borromeo on the Musa project for Smeg

What happens when a studio rooted in automotive design takes on the kitchen ecosystem? BorromeodeSilva’s latest collaboration with Smeg, the Musa appliance collection, offers an answer. Musa is conceived for an increasingly integrated kitchen, a space that can become unique when it finds a language of its own.
Musa’s rigorous aesthetic gradually reveals a complex layering of compositional and visual nuances. Clear geometries and primary curvatures are contrasted with a play of glossy surfaces and matte-screen-printed textures, creating a dynamic depth that asserts character while inviting dialogue with the surrounding environment.

This outcome stems from a nuanced approach, something only a studio with a hybrid and transversal vocation could fully realize. Founded in 2011 by Carlo Borromeo and Fabio de Silva, BorromeodeSilva emerged from the automotive world, where it grew and solidified its identity through a highly selective approach to projects. “We’re a boutique studio,” Borromeo explains. “We like to say that when you work with us, you always work with the A-team, as there’s no B-team”. Works with major automotive brands came over the years, but an increasing share of different projects express and expand the studio’s identity, making cross-disciplinary contamination – across communication, branding, and product design – its defining trait. This approach is what allowed Musa to evolve, above all, as a project rooted in identity: “Smeg is an atypical brand within its market, with a very expressive character,” says Borromeo. “It’s an evocative brand, connected to images that also belong to the past. Think of the Fab color refrigerator: a freestanding object that occupies its own space, decorating and giving character to a room. On the other hand, the contemporary kitchen has changed enormously because, like the rest of the home, it has gradually emptied out”.
“Smeg embodies a quintessentially premium idea" stresses Borromeo "not intended as luxury, but rather a kind of 'gift' people choose to give themselves by choosing the brand”.

Smeg has also consistently regarded design as a broad territory, shaped by ideas before products or disciplinary boundaries. It is no coincidence that architects such as Guido Canali, Mario Bellini, and Renzo Piano have all designed iconic objects for the brand: spatial designers translating their vision into everyday domestic products.
The identity BorromeodeSilva worked on was therefore also a spatial one, rooted in contemporary ways of conceiving and inhabiting the kitchen. “Traditional kitchens used to be filled with objects, ornaments, and decorative elements of every kind, all contributing to their identity,” Borromeo reflects. “Today we live in much more minimal environments. Also, kitchens were once purely functional workspaces. Now that people have increasingly become passionate about cooking, the kitchen has turned into a stage, a space for expressing personality.”

Carlo Borromeo

The studio’s automotive background and expertise has been fundamental finding a meeting point between the expressive character of a space and the integration of functions and technologies: "We are used to work on CMF – colours, materials, and finishes – the final stage of the car design process", Borromeo explains. "We brought this practice in the Musa project with a cross-pollination process, and, through the use of textures, in Musa we created a decorative element that generates a frame and, in the ovens, a porthole, inviting people to come closer and look inside”.

An anthropology work – investigating habits and practices – which has always been central to design culture, and especially to the Italian approach to design. “Before design itself”, Borromeo confirms, “we study the history of art, of objects, of invention in our country”.
The reference that accompanied the development of Musa, as with much of the studio’s work, has a precise name: Carlo Scarpa. “His architecture”, Borromeo recalls as our conversation comes to a close, “is made of these very clean geometries that remain deeply expressive, deeply decorative in their simple complexity”.

Opening image: Carlo Borromeo. Photo Luca Ronzoni