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Realized during 2019, ‘Spazio Lenovo’ opened in Milan in September 2020, as the first Lenovo flagship store in Europe, created by the designer Alessandro Luciani. Today, one year later, Luciani wins for this original and challenging project the prestigious ‘International Design Competition’ ‘Best of the Best’ Class 2020 award from the USA Retail Design Institute, which announced the 25 best retail projects selected from the world’s leading design studios for the 50th edition of its annual Retail Design competition. This award is a reaffirmation – among the many prizes won for this project – of the designer’s innovation and unique design.
The winning projects will go on to represent The Retail Design Institute’s Class of 2020, the ‘Best of the Best’ of shops that will opened in 2020 around the world, in all formats and product classifications. The only Italian project with an Italian signature, ‘Spazio Lenovo’ captured the jury’s attention for its unique design approach in which technology and nature communicate, blend and coexist in a perfect synergy and harmony, creating a true ecosystem representative of the brand.
The award ceremony for this project is entitled as the Oscars of the ‘Retail Design’ world, will be celebrated on 12 October 2021 during a virtual event that will be transmitted from New York City on YouTube.
Spazio Lenovo is neither a simple shop window nor a traditional store,” explains Alessandro Luciani, “but a multifunctional space with a strong brand identity, in which I have tried to blend two apparently antithetical universes to create a fluid, elegant, colorful, and pleasant environment, where the relationship between nature and technology becomes easy, immediate and functional. I wanted to recreate the sociability and sharing of spaces in a Greek agora and, at the same time, shorten the distance between the outside and inside worlds.
A technological and experiential environment designed around man”.
Alberto Spinelli, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer EMEA of Lenovo highlights the originality of the project: “We are proud of the awards that Alessandro Luciani is gathering for Spazio Lenovo; receiving an international recognition such as the ‘Best of the Best’ Class 2020 from the prestigious Retail Design Institute is testimony to the absolute uniqueness of the project,” he commented. “A place where people can live our vision Smarter Technology for All: a world where every person and business can access to the technology and to make a positive impact on society.”
THE PERSON AT THE CENTRE
The eclectic Italian designer’s design philosophy has always been characterized by a marked anthropocentric character, which places the Person at the center of his thoughts and creations, in an innovative vision oriented towards the involvement of emotions and the creation of new experiences. Speaking of himself, Alessandro Luciani defines him as a ‘designer of human experiences’.
Spazio Lenovo in Milan is much more than a ‘shopping experience’, with its harmonious synthesis of colors, nature and technology, where everyone can explore inviting and innovative spaces and live an experiential adventure under the claim ‘Smarter technology for all’.
MULTIFUNCTIONAL SPACES AND COLOURS
The store has two levels: street level and first floor.
The ground floor is an institutional space designed to host events and presentations of both products and novelties, in collaboration with sponsors and partner companies. The first floor, divided into areas, houses the commercial and business spaces, the Legion area dedicated to gaming, the virtual reality and educational area, the Motorola corner (a Lenovo brand), a B2B area, an auditorium area and a Bistrot designed to be a meeting point, a co-working space and a moment to generate relationships.
Color is the dominant element linking the whole project. In his creative work, Alessandro Luciani dedicates precise and meaningful attention to the theme of color, starting from the shared concept that color has the capacity to generate and influence our emotions and, as such, plays a decisive role in design elements and is an essential part of the human experience. Here, the colors are bright and vibrant: turquoise, fuchsia, orange, lilac, blue and flag bud green are carriers of positive energy and recall the brand’s graphic patterns.
The use of dichroic glass allows for a play of reflections of different colors and recalls the chromatic change that occurs with the passing of the hours of the day, underlining once again the constant interplay generated between inside and outside, between natural and artificial light, between being in the open air and being in an enclosed space.
The lighting design is a rhythmic play of LEDs, placing the light points where they are needed, deliberately avoiding static lighting schemes, and favoring ‘natural’ effects with warm LEDs, as if the sun’s rays could ‘enter’. The presence of a Led wall along the entire height of the store makes it possible to generate a direct, continuous flow of communication.
DESIGN PHILOPHY
The philosophy that inspires the whole project of the ‘Spazio Lenovo’ speaks of a constant relationship towards the creation of a space where people can feel good and have new experiences, having the pleasure of being in an outdoor space, while being indoors. For achieving this goal, in addition to the expert use of colours, the project includes 13 columns covered with stabilized vertical greenery, porcelain stoneware floors with a ‘seeded’ effect to recall the path of a garden and furnishings designed ad hoc by Alessandro Luciani, taking the graphic signs of the brand, and reinterpreting them in the design of furniture accessories.
In particular, the large floor tables with solid surfaces based on an original element that at first sight recalls the stem of a flower, taking up the ‘L’ of Lenovo.
In this way, through an innovative design gesture, the graphic sign is transformed into an object and the product decorates the space, generating a virtuous contamination that reinforces the link between the environment, the product, the customer, and the brand
For personalized interview with the designer Alessandro Luciani please contact OGS Vittoria Vicini info@ogs.it – ph. +39 023450610