Give me a slightly cryptic yet verbally evocative manufacturer’s name in Spanish and I’ll decipher its meaning nine times out of ten. But Italian? Well, that doesn’t come quite so easy, notwithstanding the many similarities between the two languages. So when I came across the firm name “Vismaravetro,” my only supposition was that it must be a a credit card company for Sicilian hipsters.

Twin. Designed by Vismaravetro.

After coming to my senses and ascertaining that there could be no such animal, I consulted the English language version of the company website and discovered the word to be a hybrid of founder Giuseppe’s surname and the Italian term for glass. I also learned that Signor Vismara and progeny have been in the glass game for sixty-three years running; that’s quite an enviable lineage of “glass from the very start,” not to mention more than a half-century of home-grown design and manufacture of “tempered glass shower enclosures, with a line of products that are both flexible and tailor-made.”

The company is rightly and regionally proud of their latest addition: an ultra-compact, quintessentially european laundry/shower combo, recently showing its svelte figure to the eager throngs at the Salone satellite called Eurobagno 2010. Promising much more bang for your square footage buck, the self-enclosed unit occupies the modest confines of approx. 80 cubic feet (2 x 5 x 8 feet high). Thus, for the low low cost of the space of a modest clothes closet, you get shower, washer, dryer, and linen closet, with more than enough room left over for detergent, bleach, fabric softener, et. al. And while the compact combo would find even the chambre of the French quite commodious, the design is 100% Italian. We’re talking the stuff of the millennial moden–chrome, steel, and glass; a top-mounted rain showerhead; a full-length mirrored door to conceal the washer’s works and help you to admire your metrosexual coiffure. And all of this takes up so little room, that–with the floor space saved from banishing that bulky bathroom of yore–you’ll think your studio apartment has tripled in size. With Vismaravetro, this holds sway whether the digs in question are in NYC, “Gay Paree,” or Vismaravetro’s humble burb–though by some accounts yet the design capital of the world–Marvelous Milan.

Via Trendir.