Hot, cold, chilled, at room temperature, lightly or heavily carbonated: with QuadroDesign’s Idealaqua+collection, the kitchen tapbecomes a small à la cartespring.On the outside, it looks like any other mixer tap, but beneath the sink it conceals a boiler, a chiller, a carbonator and filters, all coordinated by a technical unit that does all the work without being seen. On the worktop, this complexity dissolves into the few familiar movements we make every day. In fact, there are just two controls: a mechanical one for tap water and an electronic one for purified water, which reaches up to 110 °C. Each option has its own colour (red, blue, light blue, green, lilac, purple), so the LED ceases to be mere decoration and becomes a means of communication. The magic lies in the pull-out spray head: two different types of water – tap water and purified water – flow from a single spout without ever mixing. And the system takes care of the rest too: it measures the quantities, heats the water only when needed and reminds you automatically when it’s time to change the filter.
What is the point, today, of rethinking such an everyday action? “The kitchen tap is one of the most familiar objects in the home,” Enrico Magistro, art director and co-owner of the company, replied. “A simple interface between an action and water. Yet, as technology becomes an ever-greater part of the kitchen environment, even such a basic object can take on the functions of a household appliance without necessarily looking like one. This was the starting point for our in-house development of the new electronic kitchen mixer tap. A project that continues QuadroDesign’s research into increasingly efficient, advanced and environmentally conscious systems.”
But it is also a family story, as his sister Elena Magistroexplained, who runs QuadroDesign alongside him: ‘I remember it was 1999 when my father was granted the utility model patent (No. MI99U000264 dated 29 April 1999) for the diverter valve of the Idealaqua system, which allows the supply of purified water to be switched on or off as required. Today, with Idealaqua+, we are taking a further step forward, where the technological component deliberately takes precedence over form, but this is only the beginning.” The family wishes to open the doors to an outside perspective: “We are, in fact, considering entrusting its development to a designer, to move beyond the purely technological dimension and arrive at a new interpretation for projects in which not only performance but also form and aesthetics carry weight.”
