Natural elements like water and stone, neutral colours and a refined compositional balance, cosy atmospheres and a strong sensation of “feeling at home”: Fantini Milano open in Milan during the Design Week. An important space based on a new concept, designed by Studio Lissoni Associati, and located in one of Milan’s best-known design districts, in the splendid pebbled courtyard of a nineteenth- century building. Via Solferino 18 is the new address to note if you want to find out more about Fantini, experience the refined aesthetics and advanced technologies of its products and systems for yourself, or talk to a specialised consultant prepared to listen to your needs and offer you answers and advice, guiding you toward the product or collection that best suits your specific requirements. In true Piero Lissoni style, the space balances architectural rigour with a gentle, relaxed atmosphere created using home furnishings and the details typically found in a warm, cosy home. This character is evident as soon as you step in the door, with its big window surrounded by greenery welcoming visitors and forming a light, permeable boundary between inside and outside, a filter that captures our attention for an instant, just enough time to admire the splendid scene of the shower area to the left of the foyer.
Inside, the space maintains its original subdivision to form an exhibition route incorporating different moments and settings, following one upon the other to tell a story, creating an enthralling atmosphere and helping customers experience the world of Fantini for themselves. Elements from historic memory, testifying to a different identity with traces of what once was, have been maintained and underlined so as not to interrupt the thread of history and bring technology and tradition together in a contemporary setting. A metaphor for the company’s mission as a true factory of Italian design, capable of combining craftsmanship with the most innovative industrial processes. Matter and light are two of the key elements in the design, key themes used to construct all the different identities of the spaces, characters on which to graft elegant, refined solutions such as the long work table or the “bookshelves” representing Fantini’s history in a truly new way. Stone is the key material in the project, especially in certain parts of the showroom, where interaction between highly tactile, material surfaces and water evokes natural, primordial images tied to our most basic needs. Water runs through a groove in Salvatori’s Pietra d’Avola, in dark colours with the Raw texture, and flows out of taps, mixers and showerheads in a gallery in classic style, with niches that look as if they were carved into the material and arches that give the showroom the feel of a museum.
But in place of the busts and antique statues of a museum, the showroom exhibits the company’s bestselling classics and latest new products, with a sculptural image and absolute aesthetic, with volumes and forms underlined by the contrast between the perfectly smooth surfaces of steel and the roughness of the stone behind them. An orderly sequence, a route culminating in a wellness area featuring the most advanced showerheads, which allow us to come into contact with water and convey visual and auditory pleasures. The showerheads on display are the result of highly innovative advanced technological solutions demonstrating the company’s ability to interpret relaxation in versatile, multifunctional systems that recreate well-known scenarios and meet our requirements for wellness and personal care.
The rest of the space is flooded with abundant light, and white dominates on the walls, in bookshelves, the big table and the uniform surface of the floor, in constant contrast with the dark hues of stone. The curtains and furniture are in various shades of grey and pastel hues; armchairs and coffee tables help to create a homely atmosphere in which the bookshelves capture visitors’ attention, showing off the taps on display as if they were collectors’ items. The carpets, the big dramatic light fixture, the wallpaper and all the elements typical of a home amplify the sensation of being in a house and define quiet, relaxing spaces in which to reflect calmly on the company’s ideas, solutions and products. Studio Lissoni Associati skifully interpreted the customer’s briefing with a design concept that goes beyond the traditional concept of the showroom as exhibition and sales space, transforming it into a welcoming place with all the warmth and cosiness of the home.
And so Fantini’s new “home” in Milan perfectly expresses the company’s identity, its intention of creating cosy atmospheres and familiar sensations in projects of all kinds, residential and otherwise, and its ability to develop products and systems of great aesthetic value which are at the same time practical and easy to use. At the showroom Fantini Milano customers and visitors can now experience all the company’s new products for themselves; every one of them will be able to find a knowledgeable counterpart and a dependable partner for solving particular technical problems and above all capturing ideas, interesting sources of inspiration and different possible ways of interpreting the theme of water with stylistic consistency and an innovative approach. An important theme, because water plays an essential role in our lives; a way of approaching an element that is fundamental for our existence as part of an integrated design in which water becomes the centre of a system of relationships involving all the senses through the musical sound of its flow, the tactile feel of the surfaces that contain it, and the perception of colours vibrating with energy thanks to its reflectiveness.
