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Volare Gets a Rethink: Ulisse Narcisi's Restyling Previewed at Fuorisalone 2026
- Style Essentials Edit Team
- 16 hours ago
- 3 min read
At the ARAN Cucine Milan Flagship Store in Porta Nuova, during Fuorisalone 2026, designer Ulisse Narcisi showed a restyled version of Volare—one of the brand's most established kitchen designs and a model that has been part of the ARAN Cucine portfolio for a considerable number of years. The preview was part of Milano Design Week 2026, and for a kitchen that has gone through several evolutions already, this particular rethink feels like the most considered one yet.
Narcisi, who works with ARAN as part of the ARAN World design team, approached the project with a specific intention—to reduce the visual weight of the volumes, maintain continuity across surfaces, and arrive at something that feels structurally lighter without losing what Volare has always been. The kitchen still functions as an integrated system designed for open-plan spaces and modern architecture, and that core concept remains unchanged. What has changed is the precision with which every material decision has been made and the way those decisions speak to each other across the whole composition.
Natural oak was selected for the base units and island, a material the brand has a long relationship with and one that connects directly to ARAN Cucine's origins in Abruzzo. It is a grounding choice—oak carries a particular kind of material memory that more processed finishes don't, and placing it at the base of the design gives the whole kitchen a starting point from which everything else develops. Against the oak, Taurus gres covers the worktop, backsplashes, and the island and base sides, its deep striations sitting alongside the wood grain in a way that puts two very different material qualities in close proximity — one organic, one mineral, neither trying to outdo the other.
The wall units carry LPL Sabbia interiors, a chromatic detail that doesn't announce itself from across the room but becomes part of the experience of using the kitchen over time, revealing itself gradually in the rhythm of daily life rather than presenting itself all at once. It is the kind of detail that takes confidence to include because it only works if the person living with the kitchen is paying attention, and it suggests that Narcisi was designing for exactly that kind of attention. The handleless channel system, plinth, and titanium rail create straight horizontal lines in the design, with the metallic finish adding a subtle technological touch that enhances the overall lightness of the kitchen, which is reflected in its name and style.
Narcisi describes Volare as a living architectural experience where the relationship between solids and voids, light and matter, is what gives the kitchen its character rather than any single material or finish in isolation. He speaks of a moment in kitchen design when material overtakes form and becomes something closer to emotion, and positions this particular restyling as a calibrated balance between pure volumes and vibrant surfaces where light itself functions as a design element rather than a secondary consideration. The kitchen, as he frames it, is a domestic landscape—a place of connection where the gestures of daily use become part of a larger spatial and sensory composition.
The restyling is not positioned as a departure from what Volare has been but as a continuation—one that, in Narcisi's words, guides the design toward a more international dimension while remaining rooted in the nature and design duality that has always defined it. The brand highlights that the key feature of the project is the balance between creative ideas and precise manufacturing, as well as between traditional production methods and the needs of modern interiors, and they selected the Porta Nuova flagship as the ideal place to showcase this—situated at the crossroads of Milan's design scene and its most innovative architectural environment.
Volare was shown exclusively at the ARAN Cucine Milan Flagship Store during Fuorisalone 2026, Milano Design Week.
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