bda_007_L' Agricola | bottega d'architetti

L’Agricola is a simple and complex system at the same time. A gourmet restaurant, a shop and a small cellar are imagined within a building that remains untreated until 24 months ago.
Agricola is in fact the terminal of the production and consumption of the farm and dairy that surrounds the building.
The interior design of the new restaurant of about 280 seats is divided into five 5 “zones” (large lounge, private lounge, small lounge, and loft systems) and, in summer, two terraces.
Access to the restaurant is via a balcony, imagined as the inner square. A square that welcomes customers and distributes them to both the environments at the floor as well as the features at the different levels. The cellar, shop, restaurant and main loft of the latter, are in fact linked to it and to it in a continuous play of visual references between the various activities and the various entrants.
All the dining areas are served by the great central kitchen - the heart of the restaurant - open on the main hall, and also visible from the balcony / piazza. On the same balcony also insist the reception area and the bar.
The balcony of the restaurant allows the view of the cellar / lounge at level -1 and the shop, partially usable at the exit of the gastronomic route by taking advantage of a second staircase, no less precious, which also crosses the dairy.
All farm activities are so interlinked with each other, and this has necessarily led to aesthetically integrated design between the parts, although this did not stop them from playing on some different materials and fittings depending on the intended function.
It is therefore necessary to furnish furniture such as the “white wine cellars” and the red wine - also placed on the balcony - unique prototypes designed for the restaurant where wooden shelves coexist, resulting from months of testing on the flow of bottles, attentive use of cold machines and stainless steel doors with minimal sealing, to the “cradles - machines” of the restaurant rooms designed according to the signs of the maitre of the room, with ambient lights that can be positioned and moved even in height to counteract the large bodies light of the rooms while in the shop at the same ambient and atmosphere lights will alternate technical lights at controlled temperature and spectra depending on the products.
And if the furnishing and the laying-up of it have seen the construction of some of its parts directly on the site, in the shop the formally identical furniture was the result of careful pre-fabrication and pre-assembly in the workshop.
They are also linked by the fall system of the seeds that will pass from the silos in the restaurant (served by a auger falling down to the level of seed storage) to the “mill cell” in the shop ready to be ground to flour and directly sold.
Agricola is thought to be a refined car. A space dedicated to the quality of pleasure and at the same time to the quality of work and its product. And this has made space study and furnishing design a “place of exchange” in which the functional aspect, comfort and “well being” have been put to the reach of all. Of clients - what they are - just as much as workers, whether they are, housekeepers, waiters or servicemen.
Everything is visible, everything is of the best possible quality. Everything is craftsmanship. As a craftsman - we would not call it a workshop otherwise - it was architectural work to make the quality of architecture and consequently its well-being at the reach of everyone.