Fantini by Lissoni Architettura: 2018 Best of Year Winner for Kitchen/Bath Showroom Project
“Many, many years.” That’s how Interior Design Hall of Fame member Piero Lissoni responds to our request for a timeline of his collaboration with Fratelli Fantini. In 2001, Lissoni Associati, and its subsidiary Graph.x, became creative director for the kitchen and bathroom manufacturer’s corporate identity, and on a larger scale, architecture—now under the banner of spin-off firm Lissoni Architettura. Most recently this includes the Fantini headquarters in Pella, Italy, and its 5,500-square-foot showroom.
The headquarters appears as a compound of three conjoined cabins. However, it’s really a single 1957 office building. Per strict Italian building codes and cultural tradition, Lissoni maintained the basic structure while seamlessly inserting his own contemporary interventions, repairing and repainting the exterior stucco gray and enlarging windows among them. Inside, the envelope is pure white interrupted only by a stairway of black sheet metal and dove-gray resin flooring, “rough and elegant at the same time,” Lissoni notes. The focal point is a backlit glass wall interpreting Fantini’s famous X-shape I Balocchi sink fittings. Of course, actual fittings are displayed throughout. There are also conference and exhibition rooms and executive offices, including private quarters with a library for CEO Daniela Fantini, the daughter one of the founders.
Project Team: Samuel Lorenzi; Ricardo Hernandez.
> See more Best of Year Project Winners from the December 2018 issue of Interior Design
> See more of the project from the July 2018 issue of Interior Design
