New Kitchen Hoods from Elica
17 May 2010
“Silence is Golden”
One of the things I most like about Italy is the depth and breadth of their design work. They come up with ideas that really have to be seen to be believed and then, as a sort of exercise in audacity they make variation after variation on these designs. The Italian kitchen designs that have become such a feature on this blog site are always presented on the manufacturer’s website as first a design, then a number of variations on that design. The end result is usually an array of kitchen designs that number into the dozens, sometimes the hundreds.
Most of my life, be it writing or my own woodworking has, in one aspect or another, revolved around ideas, so I have some understanding of what is involved in sitting down and trying like hell to come up with something no else has yet thought about. But then, to make the cheese a bit more binding, there is this aspect: these designs must have about them an element of manifest practicality.
I bring all of this up, though, because Elica, like their Italian brethren in the kitchen designer business, has done some truly extraordinary things. And they have done it with what was formerly the most pedestrian element in anyone’s kitchen, the hood. I say formerly because companies like Elica have done a lot to change all of that.
And with that we can talk about Elica’s current designs. When I first saw them they blew my mind. What blows my mind all the more, though, is that I know absolutely that whenever I am looking for blog ideas, all I have to do is visit their site. If it has been more than three or four months since the last visit I am sure to find much that is impressive and new and innovative and, well, Elica.
One of their more unusual designs is at the top of this blog. It’s called the Feel and was designed to enliven that part of the kitchen while keeping the hood operation at the simplest level. Rather than fumble about for buttons somewhere on the hood, one simply activates the three large buttons on the face of the hood itself, thereby making this hood both stylish and practical. Hey, I wouldn’t need my glasses for this one!
But apart from the undeniable design advances in the Elica kitchen hoods you see here, and trust me, I have chosen only a handful for this blog, there is still the practical element of the hood itself. No matter how stylish or “fun” it may be, if it doesn’t do its job well, what’s the point really? Well, as it turns out Elica has patented an innovative system of noise reduction they call Elica Deep Silence that allows the hood to function very quietly, to a point where it can hardly be heard at low speeds. On their website they get into a bunch of math that this old bird doesn’t understand all that well, but they follow it by stating that the previous generation of kitchen hoods may be likened to an office environment with a lot of people talking away at the same time while the new is like a library where a few people are chatting quietly.
The other thing that I think should be pointed out is that unless you burn something to the point of billowing smoke, the lesser levels on a kitchen hood work just fine. Looking at the performance figures of modern kitchen hoods at their highest levels I get the impression they could suck the nail out of a board, and I don’t think that is really necessary. So now you have brawn and beauty, make that the ultimate, silent beauty. Silence has always been golden; now it’s beautiful.
Joseph
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