Milan
The showroom is located in Foro Bonoparte, one of Milan's most prestigious areas, adjacent to Castello Sforzesco and the Triennale design museum. The building's façade which dates from the mid 1800's has undergone extensive restoration.
Inside, the showrooms boasts a 600m2 historical space on two levels, which we quickly supplemented by recovering 155m2 of brick wall basement. The three levels are linked with a striking design feature, a beautifully engineered staircase that exploits the original route to the basement with a structure that is neatly recessed between the building's massive masonry walls. The staircase comprises a prefabricated steel construction system that braces the existing walls and whose central feature is a series of glass segments onto which the handrails are directly attached. The basement raised floor is TecCrete by Haworth. The concrete panels can be left exposed or covered with carpet or tiles.
As part of the overall goal to use the showroom as a creative and interactive project space we created a central reception point for all visitors at the original main entrance and reinstated a double height space that was previously used for storage. With its direct access to the buildings internal courtyard it is ideal as a dedicated interactive meeting space that benefits from direct views of the nearby castle.
The overall intention was to emphasise the original architecture as a background for the communication and presentation of Haworth's evolving corporate message and product design qualities. Internal finishes have been kept to a basic palette of warm greys for the walls and resin flooring, and a textured ceramic dark grey gallery wall has been installed to display seating products.
The showroom evokes a spirit that goes beyond the traditional boundaries of office furniture display to create a great space in which customers, architects and designers, specialists and partners can be inspired to conceive and create intelligent, effective and expressive projects.
Design: Studio & Partners, Nic Bewick.