The shop space, housed in an ancient building in the historic center of Caltagirone, is divided into four rooms of different sizes and layouts. A large central pillar, covered with marble and iron, holds together the doors and stairs that, at its base, combine the four levels. A single line of horizon, marked on the walls by an iron blade, draws the height of the tallest room on the other rooms through the linoleum fixed on wall. The original walls, previously covered with plasterboard or bricks, were released and left in their rough condition. A white lime veil makes the color uniform by highlighting the texture of stones or bricks. The ceilings were treated with polished stucco to accentuate the contrast with the vertical surfaces.
From the horizontal iron blade below which the floor cover the wall, a metal texture is developed, detached from the walls, by following an orthogonal geometry that adjusts existing wall positions and produces, along the perimeter of each room, a variable measurement gap. This has triggered a tension between the geometry of frames that make device-display for sale items and the irregularity of the original plant of the eighteenth-century building.
The electrical and heating system are positioned on the walls as slightly raised leaves. The general lighting is designed by painted metal circular chandeliers suspended against the ceiling. The entrance to the shop is preceded by a semi-public threshold obtained by the retreat of the swinging door that extends throughout the height. The bottom part, in multilayer okumè ,reinterprets the dimension line that is reverberated from the inside to the outside by the marble lining on the floor and the walls.
When you are on the threshold, before you enter, you can perceive the materials that characterize th interior space without fully understanding their role and their character. Once inside, along the diagonal, you can immediately perceive the stairs that envelop the central pillar and immediately you can understand the precise role of each of the materials used: marble on the pillar reads the excavation of the rooms, linoleum measures the levels as a fluid that Moves in communicating vessels. The iron grid draws the warp on which we can weave the variable texture in okumè multilayer that compose the exposition devices for the objects on sale.
