Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, a travertine cube that synthesizes the force of matter and form in a simple and monumental architecture
Inside this building, empty and unused since its construction, we settled the many business activities of the historical Roman fashion company.
A pivotal point: to open the palace to public for the first time. The main access level is as such dedicated to the exhibition area, bookshop, café and lounge areas.
The marble vertical cladding, the original antique red marble floor finishing and the large crystal and brass chandeliers have been carefully restored to bring them back to the original image.
The lighting design is constituted by a continuous luminous surface composed of electrified tracks to which LED tubes and spotlights are applied, allowing greater flexibility to the different display requirements.
The offices are distributed from the second to the seventh floor, arranged according to the needs of the individual departments. The project complies with the desire to maintain an open and unique perception of the space. The only exception are the meeting rooms and executive offices, closed by lightweight and transparent structures. On each floor the core of the building is enveloped by the large double-height library. The large wooden sliding doors are screen printed with stylized designs of the furs that have shaped the history of the Maison. The new floors, in order to minimize the impact of the systems and to preserve the original marble floors, are actually floating slabs of calcium silicate coated with wood.
The lighting system, designed to meet the technical requirements of work places, is characterized by an assembly of horizontal elements that breaks up large floor to ceiling heights and hides the lighting bodies, which are never visible from the outside .
On the third floor a bridge made by steel and glass passes through the central courtyard linking the landing of the floor and the presidential office area. From the side terraces it will be possible to appreciate the site-specific work of a major landscape artist.
The basement of the building is devoted to the many activities that do not require exposure to natural light, such as equipment rooms and services, post office, repositories, warehouses and product documentation archives. Along the peripheral areas,lit by numerous windows and large glass-brick skylights, the activities in office and laboratory are concentrated. It is in the fur atelier that Fendi produces all furs and for this reason, we have designed an environment dedicated to the construction of the garments with a large exhibition space.
Photos by Hélène Binet, Andrea Jemolo.
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