Cleanliness in the home arose from the necessity for hygiene. The process of civilization and the birth of modern society made it a decisive factor that has been handed down over the generations as a cultural value. In Western culture freshness and perfume are synonymous with order and harmony: the garden is the most effective symbol of this. Aspiring to cleanliness stems from our need for purity; the necessity and the dream of living in uncontaminated, intact places which mark our changed relationship to nature began with the Industrial Revolution. That is why the wildlife park has assumed a predominant role in contemporary imagination.
The environmental movement and ideas about ecology, which spread in Europe and in the United States during the Seventies and Eighties, have changed our relationship to the domestic ambience, the home, unequivocally exposing the inadequacy of the domestic cleaning systems on offer.

The Competition Workshop entitled 'Purity & Cleaners' organized at the request of MAC, a US company producing cleaning equipment for the home, was centered around drawing up a project for an ecological cleaning system.
The seminar took place in 1996 in the natural frame of the Italian National Park Gran Paradiso and allowed the four design studios and researchers participating to draw inspiration directly from the environment in order to create projects related to freshness, harmony, and purity.