Fabio Calvi and Paolo Brambilla, together in the studio that merges their surnames, have designed Ceramica Sant’Agostino’s first Milanese showroom. An important step that the Ferrara-based ceramic company has taken in the best possible way, inaugurating a very central space with large windows overlooking Corso Garibaldi. “This is the first project we have developed with the company, and right from the start we were in great harmony. Their first showroom in Milan required a sophisticated outfit to make an entrance on such an important stage,” say art director Calvi Brambilla.
The Milanese duo’s design was inspired by the Milanese capital and one of the great 20th century masters who are linked to the city. Franco Albini and his timeless design for the Milanese underground are in fact cited by the architects throughout the showroom. The graphic sign of the red handrail that in Albini’s design accompanies passengers during the underground journey continues ideally inside the new showroom, where Calvi Brambilla have proposed a reinterpretation of it in functional terms, finding a novel display solution.
Dark titanium tubes – recalling, in fact, the famous handrail – are installed on the walls of the showroom along two horizontal lines and form the supports where Sant’Agostino’s ceramic proposals are hung. “We like to do projects that are linked to the functional needs and representativeness of the brand, but that also have a connection with the place where they are placed: we wanted to do something Milanese, and that is why there are references to Albini’s work in the underground,” says Paolo Brambilla.
The tubes running parallel around the entire perimeter of the ground floor of the showroom are a decisive graphic sign that characterises the aesthetics of the space but, at the same time, have a precise practical function: they can in fact be used, in an extremely flexible manner, as a hanging system for the brand’s collections. They allow a variable modularity of the displayed panels, which can be adapted to different formats, but also vary in number according to the presentation to be displayed.
In the centre of the ground floor space, flooded by the natural light coming from the shop windows, three large totems act as an additional device for displaying porcelain stoneware elements from the Sant’Agostino collection that are alternated with other materials, such as lacquer and glass, to suggest unusual combinations, true three-dimensional mood boards.
While the lower floor is conceived as a more operative area dedicated to architects. Here is housed the material library, which is organised with a fabric wall system displaying the entire catalogue, and two large tables for exploring samples and creating combinations.
