Quadrodesign

On the shores of Lake Orta in northern Italy, under the leadership of Enrico and Elena Magistro, QuadroDesign designs, manufactures and distributes taps of essential design made of 100% AISI316L stainless steel, known as surgical. It has been doing so since 2001, when design was hardly considered in the bathroom environment and when giving up brass implied a revolution in traditional taps manufacturing. A risky choice, that QuadroDesign made to pursue a strong environmental focus and vocation. Stainless steel, especially when used 'bare', is in fact a noble material with a very low impact. During production, because it does not require chrome plating or other polluting coatings; during use, because it does not corrode in contact with water and does not release harmful elements; and at the end of its life, because it can be recycled. Even though a stainless steel faucet by QuadroDesign is designed to last forever.

QuadroDesign is a company but first and foremost a systemic design project. An ecological intuition transformed into a creative process, a vision capable of generating formal and substantial harmony in products, spaces, communications, and services. From the headquarters where the fragrances of the forest linger to the modular showroom, from the human-centered factory to the experimentations with research-focused designers, from user-friendly solutions for architects to the quality of manufacturing and the functional intelligence of the collections: everything that QuadroDesign does is thoroughly thought out by the professionals from inside and outside the company who contribute to its presence on the market and share its vision. Because QuadroDesign is also a new way of doing business: coherent, open, innovative, collaborative. And intrinsically sustainable.

At QuadroDesign, design is experimentation. Free of preconceived ideas, it subtracts materials but adds function, invents alternative and engaging interactions and creates new experiences around the theme of water. At QuadroDesign, design is rationalisation. It exploits the potential of matter to the full and develops standardised productions that generate flexible and customisable solutions. For QuadroDesign, collaboration with a design studio is a relationship that is built over time and developed through co-creation, as in the best tradition of Italian Design.

QuadroDesign promotes an archetypal design, which reduces rather than add to give shape to the true and intimate sense of things. Because designing fa product starting from its essence means using less material, reducing environmental impact. And expressing a timeless elegance that makes it worthy of respect and care. A guarantee of durability. Proceeding by subtraction also on the technical, invisible part of the faucets, QuadroDesign has separated the functional variables from wall fittings, starting with the cartridge. A solution that allows architects to work with a single specification code and achieve maximum flexibility and logistical efficiency while working on interior projects. Because good design is what you see, but above all what is inside an object.

Reducing waste, sharing the fruits of labour, contributing to a common goal, doing things well in harmony with nature. Enrico and Elena Magistro grew up in a family that believed in these values, inherited from the grandparents' farming culture and renewed in the entrepreneurial work of their parents, Carmelo and Giuliana, who founded Rubinetterie Magistro in 1978. For more than 20 years, the Magistro family manufactured kitchen taps, solid, safe products sold on the international market: a success consolidated with the invention, in the 1980s, of a drinking water treatment system. When Mr Magistro decided to hand over to Enrico and Elena the business, they decided to give the company a new face. They started with a new name, QuadroDesign, that summarizes the new company philosophy.

Inspired by the Latin aqua and the Greek hydro, the word Quadro has water at its center but adds the key element of Design in its brand name. QuadroDesign thus means investing in innovation, in a constant search for essentiality and in the use of noble materials to give the tapware industry and its supply chain environmentally-conscious twist.

The headquarters of QuadroDesign are in San Maurizio d'Opaglio, on the shores of Lake Orta in the spaces that, until 1990, housed the Mamoli taps foundry, and then the production of the Magistro faucets. The renovation project of the offices and showroom, curated by StudioWok, led to the creation of two overlapping spaces that reflect the personality of QuadroDesign. The essential design and use of noble materials can be found in the simple, pure volumes of the offices and in the palette of natural materials and neutral, warm colours.

While the flexibility of the collections is declined in the showroom in a modular layout made of walls covered with perforated panels and birch tables with the top divided into interchangeable panels.