Convivio
a Space to live Together
19 – 27 October 2024
Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven
For nine days in October, Terracotta House opened its doors.
Not as an exhibition.
As an experience.
Around the kitchen table, visitors arrived from different places, different disciplines, different ways of seeing. They sat down. They talked about design, sustainability, well-being, and the quiet power of cultural exchange.
The table held conversations that moved between ideas, questions, and the kind of silence that only comes when people are truly listening.
The kitchen was the stage for all of it. Its raw materials and organic textures were not just background. They were part of the conversation. Visitors touched the surfaces, asked how it was made, understood through their hands what no image could explain.
Apulian stone, raw maple wood finished with oil, terracotta surfaces that echo Mediterranean craftsmanship and the red bricks of Dutch houses. The central island, designed with removable drawers, transforms into a high table for ten, because this kitchen was never meant to be a service area. It was built to be lived in.
Handcrafted, bespoke, made in Italy.
At the end of each gathering, a simple gesture closed the session: bread, and the olive oil of my Apulian family. Not a meal. A symbol. The act of sharing distilled into its most essential form.
This is what Convivio was: design as hospitality. Knowledge as connection. A kitchen that did not just look beautiful, it made something happen.
The kitchen at the heart of it all was designed by SandraPlacet: a bespoke, fully handcrafted piece, made in Italy, installed in Eindhoven, and selected by Dutch Design Week as part of its official 2024 programme.
Convivio – Dutch Design Week 2024 official programme.
