DUKENA

On the island of Pantelleria, a ducchena is the masonry bench built against the wall of a dammuso, the traditional local dwelling. It stands on the terrace or beside the door. It is not bought, it is built together with the house. It is the place where you sit in the shade and wait for the heat to pass.

DUKENA takes that bench and detaches it from the wall.

What remains is the presence, the volume that belongs to architecture more than to furniture. Everything else changes: one continuous profile that folds into base, seat and back without interruption, and an internal cellular structure left visible along the edges.

DUKENA was not modelled by hand.

The internal geometry, the one you can glimpse along the edges, is generated procedurally by a system developed in house by NUGAE. The piece is built as a single continuous path, deposited by an anthropomorphic robotic arm: no mould, no milling, no machining waste.

Changing the stiffness, the response of the seat or the proportion of an element does not mean redrawing the object. It means changing parameters and printing again.

This is the same technology NUGAE uses for structural components in the marine industry. Here applied to an object you touch every day.

DUKENA starts as a seat, but the profile is a family.
Chair, wide armchair, stool, coffee table, table.

DUKENA was on show at the Genoa International Boat Show in October 2026, at the Politecnico di Milano stand, next to the structural seat of a catamaran printed with the same technology. Read the news ›

CoreLight3D® is the material developed by NUGAE for large format additive manufacturing: light, workable like a synthetic wood, already validated in aggressive environments such as the marine one.

DUKENA is produced with material recovered from our own production. Every piece carries the grain of its own batch, which is why no two are identical.

Discover CoreLight3D® ›