We recently featured Archiplan Studio's Minimalist Intervention of a Wallpaper-Filled Villa Outside Milan. Today, we're visiting LaCucina, Archiplan's clean-lined but soulful restaurant design in their hometown of Mantua. The mandate? To convert an existing historic space into a dining room that puts people at ease.
Photography by Gianni Basso/Vega MG via Archiplan Studio.
Above: "We worked closely with the owners of the restaurant to develop a peaceful space that would make diners feel as if they were guests in a private home," write architects Cisi Diego and Stefano Gorni Silvestrini of Archiplan. Like the menu, the decor is a fresh take on local classics.
Above: The designers preserved the space's original timber ceiling and paired it with plywood paneling bleached with hydrogen peroxide and an oak floor lightened through a process of removing the tannins. The white-topped tables and benches are sawn oak custom-made by Visual.
Above: The beams cradle the main room, and family-style tables and open shelving create a relaxed vibe. The white chairs are Piero Lissoni's Neve (Snow) design from Porro in stained ash.
Above: An intimate end of the restaurant features a butcher-shop-style stainless steel counter and subway-tiled wall. Decorative ductwork is a theme throughout. Here, the designers installed a duct chandelier, a collaboration between Cisi and Elia Pavesi and Nicola Pianori of ENDS Studio. Yellow paper placemats introduce a touch of color to the palette of pale wood and white paint.
Above L: The over-the-counter lighting is Archiplan's Lampada 00, designed "through a process of subtraction." Above R: The restaurant's subtle sign made of scrapwood.
Above: Modern ductwork meets old and new wood in a corner of the restaurant with intimate seating. Diego and Gorni Silvestrini say their designs are always about "attempting to synthesize oppositional forces, such as strength and fragility, shadow and light, the perfect and the imperfect."
Above: The design extends to the table signs.
Above: Lavello 17, Archiplan's stainless steel sink, "fulfills the function of the countertop" and includes a wall-hung pivoting soap dispenser.
Above: Lampado 5054, Archiplan's homage to the incandescent bulb, sits in the window.
Above: LaCucina is at 17 Via Guglielmo Oberdan, a quiet cobblestoned side street in Mantua.
For more by Archiplan, take a look at A Moody Loft and Casa Errepi.
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