Italian fashion house Forte_Forte led by Giada Forte and Robert Vattilana has opened their first flagship in Madrid.
The boutique spreads over 280 square meters (3,000 sq ft), accessed by a square and irregular brass corner door with a circular Iranian green stone handle. Seven windows open on the street creating a luminous dialogue between exterior and interior, but it is the large, white, sculptural central pillar which sinks into the ceiling and opens up in a ray of ribs, almost like an abstract inflorescence, that dominates the environment and dictates the architectural rhythm.
The floor is made of gray stone macro tiles with different textures, small inserts of green marble and brass lines; the large back wall is a layering of hand-treated plaster surfaces. The powder-pink carpet placed in the center of the room follows an irregular geometry, as well as the bright pink block of the stairwell that dynamically ascends to the ceiling leading to the upper floor.
A studied disharmony of colors, shapes, and materials permeates the project. The sharp lines with a brutalist flavor, which are found in the armchairs covered in gold leaf with perforated leather cushions and in the gray stone tables that reveal the presence of ancient fossils in the texture, are contrasted with more decidedly feminine circular shapes: the dressing room made of gilded curtain surrounded by a cage of brass poles, which can be accessed through massive swing doors, also made of brass, to enter an aquamarine-colored environment that envelops and embraces with a sense of velvety intimacy; the semicircular monolithic bench with leather cushion; the sculptural cash desk in green Iranian stone with a sinuous profile; the ceramic display elements.
Brass, hand treated like all other materials, is the calligraphic sign that recurs in the material grammar of Forte_Forte, drawing the line of the hangers, the perimeter of the mirrors, the portholes of the dressing rooms, the chandelier. the same contrasts of geometry and spontaneity are found in the vegetal presences: plants of Strelitzia Nicolai, Monstera Deliciosa, Alocasia Macrorrhiza, and Ficus Lyrata. The accumulation of sensations and situations is underlined by the paintings by Laurie Maun and the sculptures by Kalou Dubus, sinuous and feminine, and the ceramics by Ettore Sottsass for Bitossi, assertive and masculine.
The space of the boutique looks like a composition of fragments. The story, made of short and opposite sentences, is paratactic, but the overall view reveals an enveloping uniqueness. a sense of gentle, frivolous austerity comes to the fore.
Location
Calle de Claudio Coello, 7
28001 Madrid, Spain