Created by the duo of architect Elisa Ciucciovè and designer Giorgio Di Cesare, and by Diego Spartà, a student of Polytechnic University of Milan, they were the winning projects in an edition of the contest dedicated to high-design towel warmers for boats and yachts.
Revealed in Milan were the winners of the third edition of the Design Warm Contest, launched by Scirocco H, the first and only contest in Italy dedicated to the search for new talented designers for the design of innovative radiators and towel warmers.
Open to students and professionals, with no age limits, and sponsored by the Association for Industrial Design (ADI), the initiative saw the participation of professionals and students not only from all over Italy, but also internationally, from Albania, China, Iran, Germany, Morocco and Ukraine. The 2022/2023 edition focused on the creation of a towel warmer combining several innovative aspects, both technical and aesthetic, and suitable for installation on different types of boats, such as yachts, sail and motor boats, and so on.
The winners of the third edition of the contest were the ROPE project, for the professional category, and the SESTANTE project, for the student category, winning prizes worth 5,000 and 2,000 Euros respectively, and a possibility for the project to be put into production through a contract with the designer.
ROPE, conceived by architect Elisa Ciucciovè and designer Giorgio Di Cesare, is an electric towel warmer that takes inspiration from the nautical world and two items present on all boats, ropes and cleats, and transforms them into a heating element and a wall mounting system, respectively. The “rope” was designed as a flexible metal mesh tube containing an electrical heating element, covered in textile. The “cleat” is T-shaped, and can be made from both metal and wood, with a concealed mounting mechanism for the various types of fixings, with the function of not only a support, but also a hook for towels, bathrobes and swimsuits. The textile parts, from the covering of the “rope” to the power cable, make ROPE highly customizable, allowing for various colour combinations.
SESTANTE, conceived by Diego Spartà, a student of the Polytechnic University of Milan, is a free-standing electric towel warmer, inspired precisely by the shape of the sextant, the precious measuring instrument for navigation, and made from tubular aluminium elements that combine good thermal efficiency with lightness, all features that allow for reduced consumption and easy portability. Indeed, the strength of SESTANTE is the possibility of using it even outside the usual bathroom environment, for example, on the exterior deck of the boat. But thanks to its compact size and minimal footprint, it is suitable for any space-limited context. It can also be used as a place to store towels when they are not in use.
Finally, the jury wanted to reserve a special mention for the students of the Machina Lonati Technical Institute, who, led by teacher Giovanni Tomasini, participated in the contest and presented numerous interesting projects, created with both extreme passion and attention to detail.
