36e8 designed by Daniele Lago, a kitchen built around people

The Lago  36e8 kitchen (designed by Daniele Lago) takes its name from the ancient oakwood used to define its volumes. The wood stands up to wear and liquids thanks to a thermal treatment that preserves its beauty over time. A unique material, which offers a true tactile and emotional appeal with its distinctive three-dimensional graining. In this model, the Wildwood is worked by keeping a 4 mm layer of precious wood, integrated with aluminum profiles and technological solutions such as Flapp, the patented Lago handle which is practically invisible on the fronts while ensuring ergonomic opening. The Fusion top and the base units of the kitchens, with their different depths, create an interplay of volumes capable of dynamizing any interior. The Tech fronts have aluminum profiles to protect the edges from impact, while the top (which alternates surfaces in Wildwood and black quartz) has an integrated sink, also in quartz, and an induction hob. Appliances can be recessed in the bases and the suspended columns. The wall units have black opaque glass fronts and a completely lacquered structure also inside. This is how Daniele Lago recounts 36e8 Wildwood: “We were the first company to deconstruct the design of the kitchen, making it fluid and suspended, superseding the rectangles that until then had composed the bases and wall units. The 36e8 square module continues to be the design paradigm capable of generating originality and responding concretely to the needs of the kitchen space. In this case, the use of Wildwood, which comes from certified French forests, is incomparably empathic and hard-wearing.”

At a glance

What is it?
A kitchen for domestic use, which is also well-suited to the hospitality and contract sectors.
What is your design concept?
To building a kitchen around people, with compositions designed to measure for those who will use them and devised to be long-lasting.
What is it made of?
The materials used are glass and Wildwood, from oaks over one hundred years old, worked by maintaining a layer 4mm thick of prized wood. The fronts have aluminum profiles, the tops alternating surfaces in Wildwood and black quartz. The wall units have fronts in opaque glass.
How is it produced and where?
At our facility in Padua, where the wooden part is first worked and all the processes to assemble the components and quality controls take place. The machining of the glass or mechanical components and some specific operations are entrusted to specialist subcontractors.
What skills are needed to manufacture it?
The skills range from industrial woodworking methods for the transformation of the panels to laser cutting to manufacture the handles. They include craft processes in finishing and assembling the components, as well as adding the finishes to protect the surfaces. Then we should mention the numerically controlled manufacturing processes used in the production of glass, the lacquering of glass with water-based paints, the machining of the aluminum profiles and the mechanical metalworking of the structural elements.
What are its innovative contents?
Every single element in the kitchen, including the bases with the appliances and the columns, can be suspended. Technically, Lago has chosen to focus on the details, optimizing the sliding opening systems which respond easily to intensive use of the kitchen.
If you had to sum it up in just three terms, how would you do it?
Formal elegance, modularity and lightness.