name: 230 VOLT-i
date:  april 2026
project assistant: Luca Madonini, Paolo Conte
photo credits: Gaia Anselmi Tamburini

in collaboration with: Vimar

with the participation of:

Luca Boscardin, Vincenzo Castellana, Saturnino Celani, Antonio Colomboni, Paolo Conte, Rosaria Copeta, Nathalie du Pasquier, Alfonso Femia, Francesco A. Fiorentino, Vitantonio Fosco, Stefania Galante, Massimo Giacon, Marti Guixé, Giulio Iacchetti, Zoe Iacchetti, Marialaura Rossiello Irvine, Defne Koz, Luca Madonini, Raffaella Mangiarotti, Marco Merendi, Paolo Metaldi, Luca Nichetto, Fabio Novembre, Marco Piva, Francesco Poroli, Matteo Ragni, Franco Raggi, Simone Sabatti, Elena Salmistraro, Marta Sansoni, Denis Santachiara, Mario Scairato, Chiara Selmi, Giulia Serafin, Gianfranco Setzu, George Sowden, Mario Trimarchi, Cino Zucchi.

230 Volt-i is a project conceived and curated by Giulio Iacchetti, centered on the formal value of the cover plate from Vimar’s Plana residential series. This element becomes the starting point for a collection of faces, metaphorically transforming into a mask. A perceptual short circuit reimagines the common three-button plate as a mouth with three protruding teeth. An object designed to be neutral and invisible suddenly reveals a presence. From this intuition emerges the idea of a collective project. Giulio Iacchetti invited designers to engage with this ambiguity, asking them to transform a technical device into a face. This is not about decorating a switch, but about questioning its very status: when does an object cease to be pure function and become narrative? What can design do to stimulate this perception of an everyday object? The masks, created through 3D printing, offer a plurality of interpretations—ironic, unsettling, minimal, expressive, but above all, present. Each proposal responds differently to the same prompt, and together they demonstrate that design is not only about solving problems, but also about producing meaning. The plate continues to perform its function—turning the light on and off—but our relationship with it changes. From a background element it becomes a presence; from an invisible detail it becomes a character. In this subtle shift lies one of the deepest potentials of design: to introduce a poetic deviation into the ordinary, to make visible what was taken for granted, and to transform the everyday not by adding objects, but by designing the unexpected.

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