Alessi Opens New Flagship Store in Milan

Friday 29 July 2011

This month, Italian design brand Alessi opened a new flagship store in Milan on 14-16 Via Manzoni, designed by Spanish designer Marti Guixé. The location is in addition to the existing showroom, which has been the key address for the company for over a quarter of a century. The store is Guixé's third project in collaboration with the Italian brand, having previously designed the Alessi Shop and Museum in Paris in 2008, and the 2011 exhibition Italian Dream Factories (subscribers, click here for our report on it) at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan.


More complex than the store in Paris, Guixé calls the new store an "enhancement of the concepts of the classic Alessi shops". Unlike the Milan showroom, the new location is all on one level, spread across the ground floor with large display windows that flood the store with natural light. The 170 square metre space is divided into four sections, each with their own unique style. The interior has been designed as a set that will continually evolve and will play host to exhibitions or temperary presentations. The space also includes a museum, shop, and the 'Wunderkammer', a small, slightly hidden area reserved for Alessi's most precious objects.


President and namesake of the retailer, Alberto Alessi said, "I thought Marti was the ideal person to provide a setting for Alessi's increasingly complex catalogues; a setting that would be refined as befits our role as a manufacturer of Italian design, but also relaxed and not dull and self-important."