Terme di Sirmione Store, the spa company's new flagship store, has opened in the heart of the Garda peninsula. Inside is a beauty bar for an olfactory and haptic spa experience. In the small square in the historic center of Sirmione, the first Terme Sirmione flagship store, designed by architect Massimo Iosa Ghini, officially opens on November 23. The beneficial and living power of Terme di Sirmione's Thermal Water and Mud is charged with a new expressive and emotional force in the innovative retail space that offers thermal cosmetic products dedicated to wellness and beauty.
The presence of Sirmione as a source of thermal water has been known since the Renaissance, but the peninsula's thermal history began in 1889, and in 1921 the Terme e Grandi Alberghi Sirmione Society was founded. A path full of initiative and investment has led over the years to a gradual expansion of the offer, which alongside the tradition of thermal medicine, combines hospitality services with four hotels, wellness proposals with Aquaria Thermal SPA, and the offer of own-brand products with the Acqua di Sirmione nasal solution and the Terme di Sirmione cosmetic line.
And it is precisely on the beauty that Italy's leading spa operator today directs its attention, starting from where everything originates, Sirmione and its natural resource, sulfurous salsobromoiodic water. A living element, collected at the source in the depths of Lake Garda after a 20-year-long journey infiltrating the rock and descending 2,500 meters below sea level to be reborn rich in mineral salts and trace elements. The thermal water is now unique and pure. With moisturizing and regenerating properties, tolerated by even the most sensitive skin, it promotes defense against oxidizing free radicals and has a marked soothing, anti-aging, and anti-pollution activity.
Margherita De Angeli, General Manager of Terme di Sirmione: "The Terme di Sirmione cosmetic line was born as a home therapy of the benefits on the skin obtained by immersing in its thermal water. The 100% thermal water contained in each cosmetic, is enriched with synergy active ingredients that enhance its effect and effectiveness. The new store also sees water and mud as central elements to give a sensory journey similar to what guests experience in our spas: a beauty bar where they can get in touch with the thermal matter by living a personal olfactory and tactile experience. This store represents the first step in the brand's new retail strategy, which includes in the future the redesign of the other Terme di Sirmione stores located in Scalo Milano Outlet & More, in Brescia, and within the company's spas, and we hope, to the opening of others."
The design of the first Terme di Sirmione flagship store dedicated to the sale of its product lines was entrusted to architect Massimo Iosa Ghini. The spatial concept refers to a constant in Massimo Iosa Ghini's works: lines characterized by liquid design, organic, fluid, and vitalistic forms that recall futurist echoes but are focused on the search for ergonomic and perceptual comfort, the definition of emotional language. The new store is characterized by a fluid line of blue light that encloses the central "basin" where the desk is placed.
"I start from the operational and functional needs of a space, reasoning from the history of the brand, trying to identify even one cue, one conceptual element that makes this space "comprehensive." I always focus on what is being sold within these spaces. I always look for an element that characterizes the retail space -A place that presents a complex relationship of internal-external permeability - that faces the street, the everyday use even inattentive, so it is necessary to define strong elements that evoke the brand's philosophy, to communicate "the essence of the brand." For the Terme di Sirmione flagship, I identified four elements-code: the first is the City of Sirmione, understood as a well-known Italian resort with clearly delineated tourist characteristics: we worked on the brand representing the skyline of the city; the second is Water understood both as a physical-natural element with its thermal properties and as a chromatic sign to give formal suggestions such as the fluidity of the line; as a third "code" we chose a precise color, a Light Blue that was then declined on various shades and a material, Copper, intended as a color but also as a connotative component of the project; finally, the fourth element is Mud that identifies the link with the territory, the city of Sirmione and the Spa that generated the idea of the Cruet, a symbolic but also functional object specially designed, to collect it and to test it. The idea of testing the skin of the hand with mud creates a more direct feeling with the customer," Iosa Ghini explains.
The spatial composition of the new flagship store is also defined by the careful design work of LED lighting that uses iGuzzini's illuminated fixtures by studying interesting "chromo-therapeutic" effects that once you enter from the commotion of the street cause a regenerative and impact of wellness.
"The lighting study in our projects has always been significant but has become prevalent in recent years. The essential space of the Sirmione store, made up of a few elements-a shelving unit and a central water jet that integrates with the architecture of the space is emphasized from a lighting point of view with the possibility of activating three scenarios with LED lights."
In Massimo Iosa Ghini's retail projects, and the Sirmione flagship store is an example of this, quality transcends its most classic meaning, goes beyond the product, and involves communication. When it comes to spaces like these, the stylistic research is global, it concerns all aspects of the project, from the modulation of the spaces to the complements, and the purchase of the product becomes a fundamental ritual of well-being.
