On May 2019, Panerai staged the “Survival Instruments for Modern Heroes” event at the Minsheng Art Wharf in Shanghai. For the impressive happening, the Italian luxury brand recreated an underwater labyrinth complete with aquatic creatures and deep sea caverns to highlight the potential of its diving watches and chronographs.

As workspaces have becoming increasingly hybrid environments, Area-17 Architecture & Interiors designed a 2019 Iris Ceramica stand where relation and exhibition live side by side up to blending together. The display happens within the rarefied complexity of an architectural landscape that defines both areas and functions.

Inside Mia Fringe Studio guests will discover endless possibilities to express their creativity, and they will leave transformed into a surprisingly new version of themselves. Mia Fringe Studio is then an extraordinary place of research, discovery, and metamorphosis. Area-17 designed the beauty salon as an enchanted forest where this magic happens, with an overarching aesthetic clearly hinting to manga culture.

The Iris Ceramica Group showroom in London is a laboratory where people meet, interact, get inspired, learn, and nourish their creativity. Area-17 designed the interiors as if they were real-life environments, where the emotional and expressive potential of ceramics translates into furniture and solutions actively engaging visitors in the product’s storytelling. Distancing itself from a traditional way of exhibiting, the showroom revolves around a loose idea of connection, fully embracing the tentacular, dynamic vibe of the Old Street area.

The China Resources co-working offices were designed by Area-17 as a space that combines traditional values with modern functions. The nostalgic feeling of reminiscing the smell of ancient wood, solemn proportions of space, and the relaxing play of light on the porch with rustling leaves under your feet are an experience that one feels as if they brought you back into a mythical time of study and places that our collective consciousness relates to that experience.

A very young Italian fashion brand but already globally renowned in the fashion scene, Plan C, has opened its first international 100 sqm flagship store in Aoyama, an elegant district in Tokyo. Area-17 has developed and translated the original concept by Florentine-based artist Duccio Maria Gambi into architectural and exhibition elements.

During Coverings 2019, Area-17 received the “Best Inspirational Design” award at the largest international tile & stone show in North America for the Fiandre USA booth design that was a tribute to the ancient world of Italian artists’ vintage workshops, where intricate ceramic artistry took place for decades. The “Ceramic Atelier” exhibition space envisioned the concept of an inspirational workshop, like a gallery-atelier, where mixed sizes, collections, and ideas contributed to new trends and innovative projects.

This is the seventh opening by Area-17 Architecture & Interiors dedicated for Dispensa Emilia. The new prestigious venue is located within the wing side of the historic Central Station of Milan that overlooks Piazza Luigi Di Savoia. This area was recently renovated adding top-quality fast-casual restaurants exclusively accessible from the outside.

In the process of defining an innovative approach to local shopping, Alibaba Group asked Area-17 to design a new concept for convenience stores located in business districts and office areas. Named 盒马 F2 - Fast & Freshade, it sees the first tangible application in a 400 sqm store in Shanghai highly specialized to meet the needs of a clear-cut target of young business-people.

Bell is the snapshot of a movement. The truncated-cone volume synthetizes the shape of a real bell, whose oscillation is captured in a single instant. The incline of the lamp implies dynamism, an unstable temporary balance, which strikingly contrasts the obvious static nature that belong to an object of such great dimensions.

Area-17 designed Ariostea stand at LivingKitchen, the annual international kitchen show at IMM Cologne, the most important furnishing show in Northern Europe. Within an exhibition revolving around contemporary product and interior design, Ariostea introduces a new way of interpreting the kitchen environment through a non-conventional use of ceramic slabs. The Ariostea kitchen is meant to be an architecture rather than a set of furniture pieces, something that generates a new space instead of furnishing an existing one.

Area-17 designed the new concept for Chinese eyewear brand Zèle’s stores. The payoff “Stay young, stay Zèle” translates into a design focused on a strong product and brand awareness, with a refined yet trendy atmosphere. Central to the project is the inner space, both as break time and personal place, where customers discover the pleasure of devoting time and attention to themselves.