QuadroDesign sends Salone booth to Zambia to become public bathroom
The Salone del Mobile fair stand of Italian tapware brand QuadroDesign is on its way to Masala, Zambia, having been designed by Giacomo Moor to have a second life as a public bathroom.
The stand will be transformed into a permanent piece of architecture, providing what QuadroDesign says will be the area's first public bathroom.
The bathroom will have changing rooms, toilets and showers complete with plumbing components and tapware by QuadroDesign, as well as a medical clinic. It will serve the women who work in the Masala charcoal market, often accompanied by their children.
QuadroDesign commissioned Milanese design firm Studio Giacomo Moor to develop the structure for this year's Salone del Mobile furniture fair, asking that it be modular and reversible in line with the company's ambitions to cut down on waste from design week exhibits.
The collaborators also worked with Koalisation, an Italian company that develops community projects in Zambia, to identify a second purpose for the system and facilitate its transportation and installation there after the event.
"The idea of approaching Salone del Mobile with a project of this kind stems from a very simple – and in some ways uncomfortable – observation: most temporary brand architectures during design week are not sustainable, neither environmentally nor ethically," said QuadroDesign co-founder Enrico Magistro.
"Every year, complex and highly scenic stands are built, often beautiful, that last only a few days and, once the fair is over, turn into waste," he added.
Magistro said that the company had aimed to counter this phenomenon over the last few years with stands that eschewed cladding and scenography and were largely reusable, but they wanted to be more ambitious in 2026.
Enlisting Moor for the design, they envisioned a modular construction system capable of being easily assembled and disassembled and of being adapted to different spatial configurations and future uses.
Moor developed a system with a timber frame held together by specially designed four-way aluminium connectors.
The wooden posts and beams are each composed of multiple squared mini-posts, creating a lattice shape that the aluminium joints can be held in to extend the framework in four directions.
This structure gives an elegant appearance, while also creating an empty cavity where wooden panels, sliding doors or other functional elements like lighting can be inserted.
At Salone, the frame was given a light and open interpretation, allowing visitors to see glimpses of the entire architecture from outside, but in Zambia, the structure will be closed.
The red-toned, lightweight and fire-retardant MDF panels used in the booth will be partly reused as internal partitions in the common area, while fabric from the installation will be repurposed to make privacy curtains. A new roof will be built on site using local materials.
"Part of the structure has already been loaded into containers, while another part is still here in my workshop, where we are making a few adjustments for its next phase in Zambia," Moor told Dezeen.
"For example, we are reducing the uprights by 50 centimetres because the final architecture in Zambia has to be lower, and we are obtaining the fenestrations by cutting the big polycarbonate panels of the upper section of the booth."
Moor said that one of the most rewarding parts of the process has been seeing how smoothly the system performed during both assembly and disassembly.
"Both the assembly and disassembly stages in Milan were moments of great satisfaction for us," said Moor. "The entire process took less time than we had originally planned, confirming the efficiency and flexibility of the construction system we developed."
"Hopefully, we will do the same in Zambia, where we will have two weeks to rebuild the structure together with the local community."
QuadroDesign's display at Salone included the new Hum tapware, designed by Philippe Malouin to have a simple form distilled to its essentials.
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