In this previously unpublished movie filmed by Dezeen, Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola explains why she rejected the "very masculine" style of kitchen showrooms to design a retail space for kitchen appliance brand Scholtès.
Kitchen showrooms tend to be built to a "monumental" scale and dominated by heavy marble and stone, says Urquiola, who wanted instead to create a "convivial" space for Scholtès.
"Normally these kind of companies introduce the appliances inside a fake kitchen, and I disagree with that," says Urquiola, who divided the space into a showroom upstairs and a more informal space downstairs, which hosts a programme of cookery classes and parties. "I like that they can go to a showroom that has a kind of life, that can perform, but is a place where the items are related."
"We have to have more adaptable things," she continues. "Our apartments are not going to grow, and there are going to be a lot of people moving to the city. In the city, the problem is always the space.
"I don't think big. For me it's not a monumental place, it's a place where you can be together in some way," she concludes.
The showroom opened in October 2011 but was closed a few weeks later when Scholtès decided to pull out of the UK market. Urquiola's interior in still in place, now used as the Hotpoint Design Centre.