The Tea & Coffee Piazza collection was the result of a celebrated collaboration between Italian design firm, Alessi, and eleven architects, each of whom was invited to design tea and coffee sets for the company. The project was instigated in the late 1970s, and the resulting commissions appeared a few years later in the early 1980s and were sold as high-end limited edition sets. Drawing upon some of the leading architects, designers and theorists of the time, the Tea & Coffee Piazza collection presented an architectural form of expression through the language of domestic product design. The principal of collaborating with architects on domestic design products has continued at Alessi, namely through the Tea & Coffee Towers project which was presented at the Milan Furniture Fair in 2003 and showcased collaborations with leading designers such as David Chipperfield, Toyo Ito and Jean Nouvel.