Encontro is a kitchen concept developed within Interstício the broader ongoing design investigation and design language by designer Victor Manuel. The central idea behind Encontro is simple: rather than asking the user to overcome the entire distance to upper storage, the kitchen shares that distance with them.
A concealed section of the plinth extends to form an integrated step, raising the user approximately 200 mm, while the storage within the upper cabinet descends towards them. The person rises, the storage descends, and they meet.
When the interaction is complete, both elements return to their original positions, and the mechanisms disappear from view, allowing the kitchen to return to its quiet architectural state.
At first sight, Encontro is intended to read as an architecturally composed kitchen rather than as a collection of mechanisms. The functional elements remain integrated within the composition until they are required. When access to the upper storage is needed, two complementary movements reduce the distance between the user and the contents of the cabinet.
At floor level, part of the kitchen plinth becomes a retractable step, raising the user. When no longer required, it returns to the base of the cabinetry and becomes visually integrated into the composition once again. The second movement occurs inside the upper cabinet. Rather than requiring the user to reach further upwards, the storage itself descends towards a more comfortable access position.
Neither movement needs to cover the entire distance. That is fundamental to the concept. Instead of one large mechanical intervention, Encontro proposes two smaller movements that meet somewhere between the architecture and the body. The upper cabinets can retain their architectural position and proportions without sacrificing storage simply to bring everything within immediate reach.
Encontro is only one piece within a design investigation Manuel has been developing since 2017. What began as an exploration of geometry, construction and continuity gradually evolved into questions of concealed function, latency, interaction, transformation and increasingly, the relationship between the object, the human body and architectural space. Over the years, the designer began to realize that these were not separate projects. A recurring language was emerging through them.
He has given that language a name, Interstício, a Portuguese word that refers to the interval or space between things. And for Manuel, that “between” has increasingly become the territory of his work — between one plane and another, visible and concealed, silence and revelation, object and architecture, and ultimately between the object and the person. Encontro is one expression of that language, and there are many others, across different furniture typologies, objects and spatial studies.
