Paola Lenti opens in Milan its first fully owned flagship store, transforming an industrial estate of 4,000 sqm, within the Maciachini district in northern Milan, into a bio-ecological architectural site. This space, located away from the traditional fashion and design districts, represents a bold and conscious choice, reflecting the aspiration to offer the city more than just a furniture store and to engage not only industry professionals but also the citizens of Milan.
A true urban oasis that promotes and embraces the concept of a "dispersed city," where each neighbourhood possesses its own identity, quality, and capacity to inspire. Paola Lenti Milano is a constantly evolving thinking laboratory, where the exhibition of indoor and outdoor products interacts with the presence of eco-systems, gardens and plants of different species and seasons. Like a living organism, Paola Lenti Milano comprises integrated areas that serve different functions: showroom, lounge, offices, gardens, greenhouses, exhibition gallery for contemporary art, with plans for a bistro and boutique hotel in the near future.
Paola Lenti Milano aims to inspire and foster cross-pollination between design, art, and architecture within an international framework for expanding and enhancing distribution spaces.
The green project
The green project distinguishes and make the concept of Paola Lenti Milano unique. Entrusted to the multidisciplinary team of studio Pnat (Project Nature) based in Florence and coordinated by Professor Stefano Mancuso, the area of 4,000 square meters includes different habitats, guaranteeing an environment where nature and built-up space interacts until they merge.
An area of urban fabric that, universally conceived as a place where nature is accepted within the limits of aesthetic and regulatory rules, becomes in this project a system of experimentation, where built spaces intermingle with several natural ecosystems.
The design team, capitalizing on the sequence of the scenarios offered by the existing architecture, has been able to create different habitats, originating an unprecedented narrative, even more so when contextualized within an establishment with a commercial function as well.
Each ecosystem, the primary element to give life to a variegated and changing nature, was conceived considering its botanic composition and designed to express its aesthetic value and ecosystemic potential, which is the capability of producing a biodiversity having beneficial effects for people and the environment.
At a time when natural habitats are often destroyed and the variability of nature stifled, the intervention in via Bovio in Milan aims at reestablishing harmony between microclimate, biodiversity and landscape, hence representing an entrepreneurial approach based on an uncommon ethics.
Indoor living - Àlfa, the possible house
Hinting at the start of something, Àlfa is also the name of a perennial herbaceous plant from which a textile fibre is obtained and used to make ropes and mats. Paola Lenti has chosen it as the name of a house that suggests what could well be the ideal model home, as respectful as possible of the environment and people's wellbeing.
This vision for living by Paola Lenti comes together in a 300 square-metre house built inside the Paola Lenti Milano showroom. Architecture that is also "green" in its construction, thanks to the lime and hemp used for the structural cladding, natural tools that provide thermal and acoustic insulation, thanks to which the interior ambiance is salubrious, pleasant, and healthy.
Àlfa is built with materials found in nature, because a decent dose of willingness is all it takes to trigger new practices that might also mean improvement.
Outdoor Living - Inhabiting nature
At Paola Lenti Milano, the outdoor collections interact with over two hundred plants of various origin and season. Grouped into habitats that experiment with the coexistence of different species, they offer the city a rare biodiversity.
In this scenery, the outdoor area, visible from the wide showroom windows, showcases a succession of chromatic islands composed of furniture, accessories, and architectural elements. These islands capture the eye with their unprecedented colours and unique decorations, resulting from craftsmanship, essential forms, and the combination of natural and synthetic materials.
More information:
Paola Lenti Milano
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www.paolalenti-milano.it