Design Holding is opening a retail space in Milan to showcase B&B Italia, Maxalto, Azucena, Arclinea, Flos and Louis Poulsen.
To coincide with Fuorisalone 2021, D Studio is opening a new space in Milan where Design Holding’s iconic brands can all interact under one roof.
D Studio is offering Italy an innovative setting that fuses retail and project planning to provide a space where professionals, clients and lovers of design can try out the very best of Italian and Scandinavian invention. This includes the peerless icons of B&B Italia, the sophistication of Maxalto, the timeless classics of Azucena, the avant-guard kitchens of Arclinea, the experimental and innovative creations of Flos and Louis Poulsen’s iconic Scandinavian designer lamps that are designed to shape light.
Products, services, inspiration and technology: a one-off Milanese experience
The world’s first D Studio was opened in Copenhagen in June 2021 and occupies a beautiful historic building in Holmen, a residential neighbourhood as well as a cultural hub. The Milan Flagship Store is located in via Durini 14, an address that is synonymous with the beating heart of Italian design. The space that used to house B&B Italia’s historic store has seen its 2,150 smq given a new lease of life. In D Studio, each brand plays a leading role while simultaneously relating to and with a multitude of surrounding objects and products, offering a brand new hub that embraces experience, business and inspiration.
Service lies at the core of D Studio’s ambitions so that clients and professionals can enjoy a variety of installations, events and meetings that showcase its design culture and give scope for in-house experts to match the best technical solutions with each individual project. In this way, the brands can express their identities through ever-changing monographic and multi-strand shows where partnerships and spaces enable experiments in home automation and lighting.
A rediscovered and rejuvenated space
D Studio in Milan is the brainchild of Massimiliano Locatelli and Piero Lissoni, both key players in international architecture and design. Locatelli Partners architectural project has repurposed the space, revealing previously hidden features. Today’s redesign combines light and transparency to highlight the relationship between internal and external spaces. The via Durini building – designed in 1954 by Sommariva Studio – initially housed an imposing car showroom flooded with natural light through its plate-glass windows and skylights. These features have been repurposed in full by Locatelli on all three levels offering continuity, volume and a relationship with the city. The space on the ground floor incorporates the facades on the other side of via Durini and via Cerva to reveal a surprise garden. The lower ground floor celebrates the pre-existing large windows that bathe the space with light and offer original viewpoints. The mezzanine level, reached via a wide staircase, breaks up the regular lines of the layout and can be admired from every angle, linking the spaces to the raised platform and overlooking the internal garden.
Lissoni & Partners is responsible for the installation, setting the scene for a dialogue between design giants and latest creations, offering a glimpse of future collections. As for the historic features of each of the showcased brands, the installation pinpoints the essential elements of the products, displaying them and highlighting their interrelations to bring out the intrinsic qualities of the objects and individuals. Visitors are treated on the first floor to a pared-down demonstration of timeless icons counterpoised by more recent creations. Crossing this space and admiring the raised mezzanine above, you reach the garden where the outside furniture and lighting collection can be viewed all year round. On the ground floor you are welcomed into a “Piazza of Light” where spectacular lighting designs making generous use of mirrors stir the emotions. In contrast the “Technical Theatre” specialises in lighting design and technology. Finally on the lower ground floor you encounter “D Studio Villa”, a living space where you can discover the many Design Holdings brands.
The architectural lighting of all the D Studio spaces is the work of Flos and special attention has been given to the intersection between artificial and natural light as integral parts of a whole. Turnable White technology enables the colour temperature of natural light to be simulated to respect our internal circadian rhythms.
So many strands under one roof, each illustrating a passion for design
D Studio is the ideal place to bring out each brand’s iconic style in a fluid space where uniqueness creates symbioses to uncover.
B&B Italia has its entire eclectic indoor and outdoor collections on show in D Studio. Contract and retail customers can play around with the various facets the brand offers, displayed across all three floors as well as in the garden. Collection pieces such as Camaleonda by Mario Bellini and UP by Gaetano Pesce sit happily alongside 2021 innovations such as Noonu sofa system by Antonio Citterio, Allure O’ table and Flair O’ swivel dining chair by Monica Armani, Harbor Laidback armchair by Naoto Fukasawa and Sir Vito multi-purpose table by Studio Kairos. The store opening will also preview some of 2022’s creations such as Pablo Outdoor, Vincent Van Duysen’s collection and Piero Lissoni’s sunbed, Borea.
Maxalto has found its niche in the 400sqm entirely given over to the mezzanine, the ideal space to immerse yourself in the timeless style designed by Antonio Citterio and appreciate the genuine luxury of these sophisticated creations. Azucena will of course be discreetly yet instantly recognisable throughout the showroom with its classics pieces designed by Luigi Caccia Dominioni.
Arclinea dominates the contract area on the ground floor offering an exploration that invites the visitor to extend their discovery in the nearby Flagship Store located at via Durini 7. The decision to furnish the Contract area with Thea, Antonio Citterio’s latest project for Arclinea, illustrates the extensive flexibility of this idea with its global market reach. Thea is the interpretation of a specific desire to separate the kitchen into two distinct and complementary areas, the Wet and Show kitchen: one more technical and the other more convivial. This provides two functionally separate spaces divided by means of partitions/boiserie and the Frame doorway System.
Flos light creations spread across all floors starting with the long ground-level wall space showcasing decorative products. Outdoor decorative and technical lighting provide harmonious illumination of the garden while one floor below Flos lights up the “Piazza of Light” and the “Technical Theatre” in which the quality, visual comfort and luminous performance of the Flos collections can all be put to the test. This is also the setting for revealing to the public Oplight, Jasper Morrison’s revolutionary wall light. In the Project Room, clients and architects can tap into staff expertise to develop their own lighting projects. At the launch, the display window will house a spectacular installation dedicated to Coordinates by Michael Anastassiades that will be presented in its highly sought-after Argent finish. In addition, there will be a special edition of Parentesi, a unique, 50th-anniversary celebration of Achille Castiglioni and Pio Manzù’s masterpiece.
Scandinavian design by Louis Poulsen joins D Studio by way of lamps that give light new form. There are decorative and architectural lighting solutions, for both indoor and outdoor settings incorporated in classic and innovative designs: every feature of the Danish brand will be represented from the display window on the ground floor up towards to the “Piazza of Light”. Louis Poulsen’s lower-ground floor Light Room provides an immersive space in which expert staff members can demonstrate how harmonious light solutions, interlinked with a top-rate lighting project, can change one’s perception of space. It also provides an opportunity to celebrate 50 years of Panthella by Verner Panton in yet unseen finishes and versions.
Louis Poulsen will also be introducing some entirely new iconic designs. During the opening week, they will be joined by the Danish rising star designer, Anne Boysen, who will present her new modern design icon, Moonsetter. New extensions to the popular Patera family of pendant lamps will also be introduced by designer Øivind Slaatto himself. Furthermore, Louis Poulsen has collaborated with the award-winning Japanese design house, nendo, on the new NJP Mini table lamp – a much awaited family extension. At display will also be the collaboration with renowned BIG Ideas on the Keglen family – now introducing both table, floor, pendant and wall versions for a seamless and full interior solution. Louis Poulsen will also bring a few new iconic outdoor lighting designs to Milan, by showcasing extensions that makes existing bestseller designs relevant to a broader, more residential audience, with Bysted Garden and AJ Garden (design by Arne Jacobsen). Last, but not least, two of Louis Poulsen’s much celebrated Danish ‘house designers’; Vilhelm Lauritzen and lighting philosophy design-genius, Poul Henningsen, will contribute with reintroductions of iconic heritage designs – with the VL Studio family, and the PH whole numbers pendants, the PH 80 floor lamp, as well as this year’s limited edition; PH 2/2 The Question Mark.
From Copenhagen to Milan and as far away as New York. And beyond.
Each D Studio is created with the aim of setting up a dialogue with the host city working in harmony with the spirit of the place and local dynamics. At the end of 2021, D Studio will be launched in Madison Avenue in New York, offering a unique contract-customer specialised space designed to meet the requirements and habits of the American market. The uniqueness and connectedness of the D Studio story will continue with further openings in Asia and elsewhere in the United States in 2022.
Design Holding
Design Holding is the world’s largest group in the high-end design sector, with a cultural heritage of European origin and a global presence, characterized by great geographical diversification, distribution channels and product categories.
Founded in November 2018 and jointly controlled by entities from the two investment groups Investindustrial and The Carlyle Group, The Group currently combines three industry-leading and mutually complementary companies: B&B Italia, Flos and Louis Poulsen, along with their respective subsidiaries boasting a catalog full of iconic objects designed by legendary designers. In June 2021 Design Holding acquires YDesign Group, one of the leading digital platforms in the US for e-commerce in high-end lighting and furnishing products. Design Holding has recently launched a joint venture with Fendi called FF Design to further develop the Fendi Casa business.