Loggette is the term that Formigine’s inhabitants typically use to identify the areas belonging to the city’s municipality. More specifically, these areas are a series of common rooms within a double floor building, allocated trough the arcades of the city centre’s square “Piazza della Republica”. Through the years, they always have been hosting different short-term and long-term pop-up events.
In 2021 Formigine’s municipality, has decided to transform the external walls into showcases, in order to give the chance to rent these areas and to transform them in possible restaurants, shops and touristic promotion activities centres.
The concept behind the restaurant is therefore the promotion of local traditions and typical products; found in the proposed menu, in the wine selection and in the restaurant’s shop, with enables customers to buy the products that they preferred.
The restaurant’s architecture, interior designs and the environment organisation, have managed to merge the love for the local tradition with the place, without creating the typical village tavern, but instead a modernised and contemporary local restaurant.
Placing all the staff’s zones in the underground floor, has therefore enabled to spread most of the customer’s area, all over the ground floor, which is facing the arcades and city centre. On the ground floor, there are four connected zones and each of them leans on the arcades, hosting the entrance, the winery, the typical shop and the pantry.
The entrance, which is also the first dining room of the restaurant, is directly connected to a larger area, which conducts to the lower floor. This area hosts the second dining room, which has been divided into smaller spaces, in order to create a small hallway which would have kept hidden the access to the restrooms and the kitchen, and where the staff decided to place a dumbwaiter.
The hallway has been created through the insertion of a curved arch within the wall, which does not reach the floor’s full height and which has the role of separating the two areas, without compromising them and by alluding to the presence of a wider and larger place right after the wall.
The wall has moreover the function of connecting the dining room, with the other zones of the restaurant trough a sort of illusion game based on symbols and views. In addition, the archway is able to create a visual and conceptual connection with the arcade’s vaults, becoming in this way the focal point of the entrance. Whereas, the curve is able to delete the perception of the corresponding space of the natural element, a ficus tree, conferring an external touch in a strongly closed environment.
The ficus is also an essential point of connection with the winery, one of the most symbolic area for the restaurant. In fact, the internal window, situated between the winery and the restaurant’s dining room, is able to visually focus the ficus, creating the illusion of leaning on a small internal garden.
The winery has been designed as an ideal wine library, with furnishings that recall its typical elements: full-height shelving and a ladder on rails. A design conceived to showcase the wine selection in an environment that is both formal and familiar, organized around a communal table placed at the center. It is a flexible space, serving both the restaurant and the shop, while at the same time remaining separate, where tastings of local wines can be offered. This separation was achieved through a glass partition that defines the space of the cellar without enclosing it. The glazed wall also allows this area to be climate-controlled independently from the rest of the venue, a fundamental feature during the summer season.
In the entrance, which also serves as the restaurant’s first dining room, a common table was placed to recall the traditional concept of the shared table, thus creating an environment that feels both familiar and modern. In the second dining room, smaller tables were arranged, with some of the seating integrated into the wall furnishings.
The only exception is the round table at the base of the ficus, which echoes the curved shapes of the partition wall.
The walls have simply been painted, without correcting any plastering imperfections, in the interest of preserving the historical beauty of the place. The colour used to connect all the features of the restaurant has been dark green whereas in the ancillary and staff areas, a completely contrasting colour has been used, in order to emphasise the differentiation in betweenthe dining and service zones. In these areas, the choice in fact fell on a golden colour, which increased their brilliance and lighting of the place.
