Just over two years since its launch, having toured the project around the world and having opened more than 500 points of sale in more than 40 countries, Kartell by Laufen is launching its first monobrand store in the heart of Milan’s Brera district, at Via Pontaccio 10.
A signal to the international market that it is here to stay, the Kartell by Laufen catalogue comprises a full range of furnishings, accessories, sanitary ware and other bathroom fittings designed by Ludovica and Roberto Palomba. Its efforts were also recognised by some of the sector’s most eminent opinion leaders, including Wallpaper, which awarded it the prize for Best Wash at the Wallpaper Design Awards 2013, and Elle Decoration International, which named it the winner of the EDIDA 2014 prize in the Bathroom category. From 2013 to 2015, an intensive, far-reaching roadshow saw international events taking place in major cities (London, Brussels, Prague, Warsaw, New York, Miami, Paris and San Paolo) and took the project to some of the biggest design fairs in the world (Salone del Bagno 2014 and ISH Frankfurt 2015). These events gave the international public the chance to get up close and personal with the product and truly understand its value.
Since its début, more than 500 high-quality stores have been opened in more than 40 countries worldwide.
As proof of this commitment to retail, Kartell by Laufen is launching its first monobrand store in the heart of Brera, at Via Pontaccio 10: about 200 square metres, with four store windows opening onto the street. The setting of this first space is by Ludovica and Roberto Palomba, best interpreters of a new way of conceiving bathroom projects. The internationally famous architects and trend setters of this industry, as well as designers of the entire collection, feature the best of Kartell by Laufen in unexpected thematic and chromatic moods.
“Kartell by Laufen to us is an harmonic collection made of exciting icons representing the perfect balance between high-tech and pure beauty. And if Kartell by Laufen up to now has been synonymous with colour, feeing and transparency through ultrathin ceramics, innovative materials and new technology, now Kartell by Laufen becomes Architecture.
The first single-brand Kartell by Laufen showroom is conceived as architecture in the truest sense, where materials and space narrate the proportions and sensations of a place, the bathroom, now acknowledged as one of the most important in the home.
Walls become tactile and the curves integral part of a scenario that transforms the bathroom into an architectonic icon.
This is the aim of the Kartell by Laufen showroom, to reveal the DNA of these two companies, Kartell and Laufen, in an absolutely different way to how it has been seen up to now”
– Ludovica and Roberto Palomba
The space is articulated over two levels, and like the style of the brand, the ambient is exceptionally fresh, with the clean lines of the interiors playing on tactile combinations and architectonic volumes. On the other hand, the windows have much greater graphic impact: a luminous mesh of white backlit pedestals forming the base for Kartell by Laufen’s still life compositions on a backdrop of polychrome transparent plexiglas panels. The windows play a fundamental role in presenting the collections because the space is so different to the usual bathroom fitting showrooms, putting more emphasis on feelings, glamour and lifestyle.
The ground floor has five different settings, each corresponding to a different bathroom concept with the latest products: the 120 cm basin, the metallic basin units and the Boutique furnishings.
A long oblique wall at the entrance presents a working composition of one of Kartell by Laufen’s bathroom proposals.
The same wall displays the entire range of basins, and the taps too have a specifically dedicated technical area.
The lower level offers another seven installations, each very different in terms of dimensions and mood: some with strong colours, like the orange and total black bathrooms, others highly compact to show the great potential that even smaller, guest bathrooms have. And naturally there is a vast range of proposals for the hotels and contract sectors in general.
With this showroom and this layout Kartell by Laufen demonstrates the versatility of its collections, perfectly adaptable for installation with style and character into almost any context.
Milan is the ideal home for a retail project based on a monobrand concept and high-end distribution within the bathroom industry.
Kartell by Laufen
Via Pontaccio, 10
Milan
Until the 19 April, from 10am to 8pm
www.kartellbylaufen.com
