CESARIN SHOWCOOKING

Simone Bossi

• Architects

A wooden theatrical space for show cooking inside a candied fruit factory.
We are inside a factory that has been producing candied fruit for more than a hundred years in Valdalpone, an agricultural area between Verona and Vicenza famous for its Prunus Avium plantations, or cherry trees.

photo_credit Simone Bossi — Simone Bossi

The intervention is on the first floor of a production building with a pitched roof, an internal height of about five meters and double windows on the perimeter. The need was to create a show cooking space where they could shoot demonstration videos for the use of their pastry products, a kitchen with the relative services and a new meeting room.

Given the height of the interior space, the strategy was to insert a new double-height wooden volume that detached itself from the existing industrial interior and could accommodate all the required functions. The industrial legacy is visible in the exposed beams on the perimeter walls, which, painted like the walls, are like a blank canvas that highlights the lines of the project.

The wooden volume highlights the height of the ceiling, defining the rhythm of the spaces with plays of solids and voids and creating unprecedented internal views. The new volume was designed as a large piece of furniture, inspired by Antonello da Messina's painting "San Girolamo nello studio", a real obsession, in which a Renaissance man works inside a habitable piece of furniture . Painting also known for the impeccable use of perspective, restoring the image of a space that is lived in but at the same time utopian and rigorous.

The other reference is to the theater, having to create a scenic area not immediately visible upon entering. To emphasize the theatrical aspect of the space, light wavy curtains resembling a curtain were used to darken the numerous windows.

The volume was designed as a real wooden house, with a balloon frame structure with fir pillars and beams, covered in okumè wood, which recalls cherry wood in color, in fact the company's flagship products are the cherries. The construction technology was chosen for its lightness and to facilitate transport and assembly.

The interiors of the new volume have been designed to contain all the required functions: on the ground floor near the entrance a small coffee area, a sitting area and a wardrobe area, then continuing along the corridor a staircase leads to the mezzanine floor, behind a flush with the wall there are the customers' bathrooms and continuing on the main room opens up where the counter, the kitchen with the storeroom and the staff bathroom are located. On the mezzanine floor a meeting room with a large central table.

The wooden structure was made by a carpentry in South Tyrol. With which a very interesting job has been done on the prefabrication of the structural elements, which has allowed, in addition to speed and precision, a quality that would otherwise be impossible.