Fisher & Paykel brings a slice of the New Zealand forest to Salone del Mobile
With ‘Nature – Ritual’, an immersive booth presented as part of EuroCucina, the 93-year-old company proposes that chores can be less of a chore
While we love Salone del Mobile, navigating the dim, hangar-like convention halls for hours can have you longing to touch grass, quite literally. New Zealand-based luxury appliance brand Fisher & Paykel has offered the next-best thing with ‘Nature – Ritual’, an immersive booth design that surrounds visitors with the sights, sounds and scents of a lush forest.
The 4,800 sq ft booth, presented as part of Salone del Mobile’s biannual EuroCucina kitchen showcase, is wrapped entirely in a backlit curtain printed with lush imagery of dense New Zealand trees and verdant vegetation. Visitors are greeted with a tea ceremony, where staff pour local kawakawa tea into vessels designed by ceramic artist Aaron Scythe.
A view of the tea ceremony that greets visitors to Fisher & Paykel's booth
As fairgoers navigate a series of four vignettes, they encounter textured, sculptural monoliths, crafted from a conifer called Tōtara and volcanic basalt, that showcase Fisher & Paykel’s innovations across kitchen and fabric care products. Surrounded by the chirps and trills of native New Zealand birds – notably the tūī, korimako bellbird and pīwakawaka – you feel transported from a trade fair to someplace calming and ancient.
A vignette displaying specially-commissioned ceramics and Fisher & Paykel's integrated Wine Columns from its State of the Art Collection
It’s all meant to emphasise the rituals inherent to cooking, hosting and dressing, while also underscoring Fisher & Paykel’s commitment to the design community and the environment. The natural world, says Fisher & Paykel CEO Daniel Witten-Hannah, ‘is at the heart of everything we do. It’s how we serve the design community.’ In fact, the company has committed to cutting its appliances’ carbon emissions by 90 per cent by 2050.
A view of the forest-printed curtain, which features an ultra-high-resolution photo by Josh Griggs.
To pull it all together, Fisher & Paykel tapped Dean Poole, creative director of Auckland-based studio Alt Group. The designer, who worked alongside Italian firm Calvi Brambilla and Partners, opted to ditch played-out luxury signifiers like marble and over-the-top design, in favour of an intentional palette of timber and volcanic stone, a move that ‘communicates not only the integration potential of the appliances presented, but the place in which those appliances were conceived and designed,’ he says.
Appliances from the company's State of the Art Collection, which are displayed as sculptural stacks
Poole’s design even included a custom fragrance, created in partnership with Italian fragrance company Integra Fragances, that smells like a New Zealand beech forest, and garments by Kiwi designer Claudia Li framing a display devoted to fabric care. These elements, combined with ethereal lighting and exquisitely detailed carpentry, showcase the aesthetic potential of Fisher & Paykel’s State of the Art Collection.
A kitchen vignette, with a monumental basalt island and a wall made from carved tōtara is at the centre of the pavilion and showcases Fisher & Paykel's Minimal Style appliances.
Through its high-tech products, the 93-year-old company proposes something radical: that domestic tasks can transcend a to-do list. ‘“Nature – Ritual” expresses our belief that the best design is connected to place, shaped by human need and resolved with clarity,’ Witten-Hannah says. ‘It reflects our belief that products engineered for life reduce friction, engage the senses and elevate everyday routines into rituals in the home.’
‘Nature – Ritual’ is on through 26 April 2026 during Salone del Mobile at EuroCucina, Hall 4P, Stand D34
