Mario Cucinella Architects design the new Artemide Exhibition Centre

Published
04 Sept 2021
Reading
3 min
The new Artemide Exhibition Centre, designed by Mario Cucinella Architects, is an exhibition area connected to the Innovation Centre in the Pregnana Milanese Headquarters.
Inaugurated in the occasion of Milano Design Week 2021, it will be a permanent but constantly evolving exhibition space for showing light in all its forms. It is a living space that combines the history and future of the company with an interactive, digital experience, a story of content and dialogue with the most innovative management and communication systems. Directly connected to the testing and certification laboratories and to the research and development department, close to the design and production offices, it is a direct expression of Artemide’s know-how, where it will show off ideas, skills, and core values such as sustainability.
Training and research will be the heart of this centre in which to experiment and experience the most advanced Artemide innovation such as the Integralis technology.
The space is defined by an architectural ribbon that runs fluidly over the space of 1000 square metres, generating environments in which to demonstrate the light. The curved lines of the walls break and overlap to create passages and divide the space up without closures but by using cuts of light.
«I was interested in connecting Artemide’s “sign” with the care in the design of its products, drawing on the company’s research philosophy, to create an open, flexible space in which to fully appreciate the light experience. The “sign” is re-proposed in the dynamism and movement of a “narrative tape” that creates a continuum with the outside and accompanies the observer on an experiential journey. Between light and shade, we arrive at a garden where elegance, design and lighting blend with nature». Mario Cucinella
It is an open, permeable structure between inside and outside, between constructed and nature, it fits into an industrial building that is not masked but allowed to be glimpsed by way of the openings in the false ceilings. These generate a dialogue between existing and built, between natural and artificial light.
The new Artemide Exhibition Centre is a place designed not only to present Artemide collections and services, it is also a space in which to host and listen to the world, closely linked to a centre of expertise, skilled in the interpretation of ideas and their distribution. It is a space that is open to dialogue, the exchange of ideas and relationships, that aims to strengthen the national network linked to the design of the city of Milan in which this was created thanks to a special connection between polytechnic school and companies, knowledge and know-how that from the beginning has been the driving force behind innovation.
«Artemide, in the heritage of Ernesto Gismondi, is a company that brings together creativity and measure, research and great international architects with whom it shares a design ethic. This is a space to welcome and include experiences in the Artemide Headquarters centre of excellence, describing a company within a geographical context that activates the culture of the project. To be understood, light needs its spaces, to illuminate our common future it needs cross and depth knowledge. In this living space we want to interpret the design of light as a project capable of giving a perspective» Carlotta de Bevilacqua