Storybox Karman

KARMAN ADORNS INDUSTRIA, ATELIER-RESTAURANT IN THE HEART OF FLORENCE

Written by Ilaria Traditi | Jul 27, 2016 9:03:29 AM

Industry Restaurant is a creative place that enhances manufacturing and craftsmanship, the founding elements of Karman's stylistic concept which, with its lamps, has decorated some of the local environments. Among the creations chosen by architect Eleonora Schettino, the Atelier lamps could not go unnoticed, with their lampshades stitched and fully decorated by hand just like an haute couture dress, marked by craftsmanship that enhances each piece, making it unique.

 

 

In the long passageway among the administration halls, one can admired the Kimono lamps that, with their sinuous forms, recall Japanese lanterns and are also suitable for outdoor environments. Whereas after the entrance and the local toilets, one can find the suspended Nando lamps, composed of a tube and a metal joint, two elements which together can be transformed into vectors of light crossing the threshold between the yard and the house, an entity between technical and sophisticated. The architect did not want to give up the bright Gangster lamps in white ceramic, which, with sharp corners and rounded lines, make one immediately think of a gang dressed in white against the backdrop of America's economic boom of the 50s, a slice of the story told in a light-hearted and ironic way.

 

 

Industria Restaurant, placed in a strategic position close to the Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery, is also an ideal starting point to discover the marvellous historic centre of Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance. The keyword for the environments and rooms is hard work, understood as the instruction originating from the methods and processes of industrial craftsmanship.

 

 

What emerges is an atypical restaurant, where one creates, transforms, realises and produces. It is a place where one works and invents to satisfy both for the sake of those who taste and for the joy of following in each of its phase after having invented the realisation of the food in its handmade garments.

 

 

The stylistic work of the architectural design was titanic: after having brought the seventeenth-century structure to light, hidden since the end of the sixties by plasterboard, ceilings, plaster, wallpaper, paint, gypsum and mirrors, a space was made with cross vaults, vaulted ceilings, skylights in glass brick, wooden ceilings, arches and outlines of steel, brick, stone, wood and iron. It was actualised with the intention to let people in, allowing them to dwell in a restaurant without a precise time reference, freeing the imagination.