Duvetica Showroom

In 2011 Tadao Ando's office had already designed Duvetica's flagship store, at 22 Via Santo Spirito. Three years later, for the brand's tenth anniversary, Duvetica entrusted him with a showroom at 41/A Via Senato, which officially opened on 23 June 2014. Ando worked within an existing space and redrew its internal division.

Moving the showroom out freed space in the Via Santo Spirito store, whose sales area was doubled.

The showroom covered about 240 m², all linear geometry, fair-faced concrete and pared-down elements. Its core was a wall of fair-faced concrete, inclined in the vertical plane and curved in the horizontal one, 12 m long, over 7 m high and 20 cm thick. It cut vertically through the two levels and dominated the Via Senato window, behind a wide pane that showed both levels. The wall kept the lines and holes left by the formwork, and lighting set low picked it out where it met the floors.

The renovation tried to keep as much of the original layout as it could: the existing coffered wooden ceilings and the window and door frames were reused where possible. Grey and white prevailed, to set off the brand's brightly coloured down jackets: industrial concrete floors dusted with quartz, Venetian marmorino walls, pearl-grey Corian furniture and natural wood with a grey glaze. In the meeting room stood a concrete table designed by Ando.

At the opening, the ground floor held the welcome area, the women's and children's collections and the offices; the lower level was given over to the menswear collection.