Armani/Casa inaugurates lavish Milan flagship store

By

Elena Passeri

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Apr 4, 2017

Giorgio Armani has a new palazzo, a lavish home for its luxury furniture and home decoration collections. The new Armani/Casa flagship store in Corso Venezia 14, Milan, opens in fact on 4th April, in parallel with Milan's six-day feast of furniture and design, the Salone del Mobile (Furniture Show). The new store is the world's largest for Armani's home decoration and furniture label, extending over 1,500 m2 on four floors, with a retail area of 1,000 m2 and a staggering 16 shop-windows.

"Furniture design is an essential part of my lifestyle vision and with the new store, formerly the home of furniture manufacturer De Padova, I have the chance to showcase my entire collection. It is a landmark store, though it is not colossal. I have imagined it as an atelier, fluid, versatile and constantly evolving," said Giorgio Armani.

The interior layout, design studio-style, can change at will, narrowing and enlarging thanks to platinum-coloured twin metallic mesh panels, reaching up to the 4.30 m [14 ft] ceiling, and used as ephemeral screens to separate different settings. Alongside them, large transparent acetate panels feature prints replicating some of the design patterns and motifs from the collections' carpets, fabrics and wallpaper, giving a glowing touch to the interiors' atmosphere.

The double-height ceiling is interrupted by a mezzanine overlooking the ground floor, while a sculptural staircase in light oak wood, its underside covered in mother-of-pearl effect veneer, links all the floors.

The light fixtures are screened by a fine platinum-coloured metallic mesh, and a vertical cleft in the shop-windows allows glimpses of the furniture on display. An image of the Logo lamp, designed in 1982, has pride of place on all the store's windows, on the mesh-screened glass. The lamp, the emblem of Armani/Casa, crops up inside the store too, carved into the ground-floor's wooden wall-panelling.

The four-floor store showcases the entire Armani/Casa collection. Seasonal novelties in furniture, lamps, sofas and accessories are on the ground floor; the mezzanine hosts accessories, wallpaper and fabrics; the first floor is home to the permanent collection, with limited edition items alongside the brand's classic ones. Finally, the basement is the cradle of tech products like kitchens and related accessories, and bathroom fittings, upholstery and textiles.

Since 2003, Armani/Casa's Interior Design Studio offers private customers and property developers a full-service interior design consultancy, from concept creation to supervision of the project's fulfilment.  Armani/Casa is present in 29 countries with 42 stores, in Milan, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing and other major cities worldwide.