La Cupola Espresso Coffee Maker

Most moka pots are shaped by the plumbing: a waist where the two halves meet, an angled handle, a spout bolted on wherever it fits. La Cupola starts from the opposite end. It is a plain cylinder with a dome on top, and the dome is the whole argument.

Alessi's La Cupola is a stovetop espresso pot drawn in 1988 by the architect Aldo Rossi, who wanted a coffee pot that anyone could afford, and Alessi says that wish is what shaped it. The company describes the object as a small table architecture, primary geometry with a dome-shaped top, which is the language Rossi was using at building scale brought down to fit a gas ring. Underneath, it works the way every moka pot works: the two halves screw together around a basket of ground coffee. Everything above that join is given over to the dome, including the knob you lift it by.

Production started the year Rossi drew it and has not stopped, so the pot on sale today sits nearly four decades into one continuous run. A six-cup twin is made alongside this three-cup version. Alessi designs, develops and quality-controls everything it sells in Italy, then has this one made in Vietnam by a partner chosen for local specialisation, a split the company prints on its own product page rather than leaving anyone to find it. Rossi was born in Milan in 1931 and died in 1997; Alessi calls him one of the greatest Italian architects of the second half of the twentieth century.