Fontanot

I The Albini brothers opened a carpentry shop in Rimini, where, among other things, they produced ladders. The workshop, located in the town, employed six people and mainly served local customers. The early ‘70s were years of change for the company: Enzo Fontanot joined as partner and the Albini & Fontanot brand was born. In the ’70s a radical transformation began, focused on the design and production of open staircases thus heralding a new construction concept for the staircase as integral part of interior design. In the ‘80s Albini & Fontanot was the first company in the world to use an industrial process for the construction of open staircases. In 1982 Albini & Fontanot launched the Xnodo model, the first staircase featuring the revolutionary horizontal and vertical structure adjustment system to adapt the staircase to any space, and made of steel and polyurethane, a material that had never before been used in the sector. The real revolution, once again the fruit of the work carried out by the internal Research & Development Department, was the Kompact model and the patented support that allows adjusting the structure. The Arkè brand of Albini & Fontanotwas born, a complete line of kit staircases, easy and fast to assemble and designed for those who wish to personalise their home in total freedom. Alongside the collections that made for the success of the company in the ’80s and ’90s was the new Scenik collection reinterpreting the concept of modularity and adaptability to make the staircase a valuable architectural element. The Genius staircase was born, a new concept of adaptability to any architectural solution so that the staircase goes beyond its functional purpose of connection element between floors and creates a spatial and emotional continuity between different worlds and values. Techne was born, the first plastic staircase in history, made of polymers reinforced with fibre glass and injection moulded to produce a staircase with a smaller number of components yet maintaining its structural performance unchanged in any environmental condition. Coloured, resistant to UV rays, hard-wearing and fully recyclable: industrial genius and sophisticated technology inaugurate a new interior design language. The company reinvented itself with a new brand to open up to the future with a renewed industrial spirit and to chart unexplored horizons in the indoor staircase market. The market changes, unexplored scenarios open with the new generation at the top, and the values that have always inspired the philosophy of a pragmatic, ingenious company open to the future receive new lifeblood: innovate, amaze and astound.