A KITCHEN IMMERSED IN NATURE

CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati presents OLTRE, an outdoor kitchen for Veneta Cucine. Building on Veneta Cucine’s idea of continuous space, the project imagines a kitchen that extends beyond the home and into the landscape. Designed to adapt to a wide range of terrains, the project will debut at Eurocucina during Milan Design Week.

International design and innovation studio CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati presents OLTRE, an outdoor kitchen developed for Veneta Cucine. The project stems from an initial collaboration between CRA and Veneta Cucine around the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, where the curatorial theme explored the relationship between natural, artificial, and collective intelligence. From that exchange emerged OLTRE, which extends Veneta Cucine’s vision of continuous space beyond the home and will premiere at Eurocucina during Milan Design Week.

OLTRE reconsiders the kitchen as a domestic infrastructure that does not end at the house wall, but extends into the landscape, redefining our relationship with nature. Conceived as an adaptable system, it behaves like a river unbound, always charting new terrain. 

Conventional kitchens are linear systems fixed against walls, hence defined by straight lines and rigid cabinetry. OLTRE breaks free from that constraint, dispensing with walls altogether. Its design embraces the complexity of nature: it is defined by continuous curves, capable of adapting to different settings. Its form follows the logic of the surrounding terrain and greenery, creating a new kind of domestic landscape. It could be called an ‘all-terrain’ kitchen.

This versatility is enabled by a movable “skin” that opens like an accordion, peeling back to reveal functional components beneath, like bark from a branch. The version presented at Milan Design Week is clad in mirrored stainless steel, whose reflective finish mirrors the surrounding landscape and visually dissolves the kitchen into its environment. A floating countertop serves as the main workspace, integrating cooking and washing appliances.

Inspired by living organisms that grow in dialogue with their environment, the system can be deployed in many settings: in a garden, around a tree, alongside a boulder, as well as in more traditional indoor settings. Its curves flex horizontally to follow the contours of the terrain and can also adapt vertically to shifting elevations.

At Salone del Mobile, the prototype is installed within an Italian garden setting. Around it, benches emerge as natural extensions of the landscape, transforming the kitchen into a space for gathering. Veneta Cuicine will present some conceptual images of OLTRE in extreme environments, from arid deserts to glacial landscapes, as well as among dense forest floors and open fields.

“In traditional homes, nature enters through the kitchen,” explains Carlo Ratti. “With OLTRE, we are inverting that relationship, with a kitchen that enters into nature.” The project takes one of the most familiar elements of domestic life and places it in a new setting, asking how design might respond more directly to the environments we inhabit.

Daniela Archiutti, Art Director at Veneta Cucine, reflects: “OLTRE expresses an idea of continuous space, where the fluidity of the interior extends into the exterior and becomes part of it. Everything comes together, and in that continuity, everything acquires value and meaning.”

OLTRE is the latest in a series of projects from CRA that investigate the convergence between the natural and artificial worlds. Previous works include the studio's award-winning Olympic torches for the Milano Cortina 2026 games, the digitally fabricated Alpine bivouac with a geometry derived from 3D scans of Alpine rock formations, and AquaPraça — the celebrated floating platform moored in Venice and presented as the centerpiece of the Italian Pavilion at the UN Conference COP30 in Belém. Through each of these projects, CRA reaffirms its commitment to engage with nature as a condition to work with, rather than a backdrop to design against.