In the small-but-mighty universe of stovetop coffee makers (also known as the moka), Alessi is the undisputed king. Since the 1970s, the Italian company's catalogue of moka pots has grown into a collection of imaginative designs by some of the world's most celebrated architects and designers, from Aldo Rossi and Michele De Lucchi to David Chipperfield. It also helps that Alberto Alessi, the Piedmont-based company's president, is the grandson of Alfonso Bialetti, who, in the 1930s, popularised the coffee maker as we know it.
Next up in the roster of creatives invited to leave their mark on the popular coffeemaking tool is Philippe Malouin, whose coffee pot, Vite, is unveiled at Milan Design Week. The London-based Canadian designer had long been an admirer of spirit into everyday objects.
‘In my first year at university, we had to choose a design object and write a dissertation about it. I chose the Spirale ashtray, designed in 1970 by Achille Castiglioni,' he recalls. ‘In my dissertation, I wrote about the clever use of materials, the ease of cleaning, and the use of a spring – welded at both ends and pushed into a cavity – where the cigarettes rest. For me, an object becomes iconic when it works very well, is constructed properly, and lasts for a long time.'
For his Alessi debut, Malouin convinced the company to let him roam around a scrapyard in Ossola, near the company's Lake Orta headquarters, to look for inspiration. It's an approach that is not uncommon in his work: in 2022, he created a collection for Athens gallery The Breeder using found objects, assembled and spray-painted into bold furniture and lighting designs. ‘I'm interested in copying and pasting objects found in a scrapyard to discover new functions, new objects, and sometimes entirely new directions,' he says.
In that collection, the bracket from a park bench was joined with a bodybuilding plate to form a chair, while a bent steel plate on top of an I-beam served as a table lamp.
Vite Coffee Pot by Philippe Malo
Similarly, the starting point for the moka pot was scraps of metal that helped Malouin shape the vision of the product he wanted to design. ‘I wasn't looking for anything very specific. I was mostly observing mechanical parts and connections,' he says. ‘At some point, I noticed a simple metal screw that immediately reminded me of the way a moka pot is assembled. The moka already has this threaded connection between the top and the base, and seeing that piece made me realise that the screw itself could become the base of the object. That observation eventually became the central idea of the design.'
The ‘Vite' moka pot's base, with some of the scrapyard finds that inspired its shape
From that point, refining the moka pot took several years, during which Malouin worked closely with design director Carlo Gasparini. ‘Our discussions were often about manufacturing details and the meaning of objects,' recalls Malouin. The process involved rough prototypes and experiments, to understand how the screw could become an element of the moka pot's structure.
As part of his design process, Malouin assembled and photographed various metal elements found in a scrapyard near Alessi's HQ
‘There was a lot of work around the proportions of the object, particularly the relationship between the size of the water chamber and the size of the upper container,' explains Malouin, who, prior to the collaboration, had never designed a cooking object before. ‘We also had to carefully design the material assembly so the moka pot would work on both flame and induction cooktops. From there, we refined the proportions, ergonomics and details until the object felt simple and intuitive to use.'
When asked about his favourite Alessi coffee pots, Malouin cites another design guided by functionality and intuition: ‘Richard Sapper's ‘9090' moka pot, hands down. The movement of the handle and the little click it makes is incredibly satisfying. The handle has the size it does because of the leverage it needs to open and close access to the inside of the moka pot, which makes it a great example of form following function.'
The final object features a die-cast aluminium base with a top available in three colours, with complementary hues on the handles. A fourth version completes the collection, with a full aluminium body and dark green handle.
It represents both the spirit of the company and of Malouin's work, on the cusp of industrial functionality, unapologetic use of colour and experimental forms. ‘From Alessi, I learned that an object needs to breathe a bit of magic while fully incorporating manufacturing clarity and honesty in order to be successful.'
