Vernissage

The project of the Vernissage "sustainable cocktail bar" starts from the idea of responding to the requests of the client in a different, unsettling and revolutionary way. No rooms with tables and chairs along the perimeter of the room, but a succession of undefined spaces, without spatial hierarchies capable of giving freedom of interpretation of the space and its use.

The bistro is located in the historic center of Naples, between history, beauty and culture, along an artery where we find the Principe Umberto gallery, the Bellini Theater and the Academy of Fine Arts.

The idea is to create a meeting space where food and drink can coexist with music and art. A neutral space, which can be set up for art exhibitions, cultural events, musical happenings, which is based on a sustainable and architecturally democratic approach.

The Vernissage consists of three rooms on the ground floor, within which monolithic volumes of different sizes are arranged which can be used as seats, tables and supports. The rooms, entirely in clay, are wrapped in a "ribbon" of burnished metal which becomes a bottle holder and background for the volume of the bar counter, embellished with vermilion-colored glazed clay brick shutters. In addition to being a compositional and display element, the boiserie is used as a technical compartment for the systems.

A passage opens in the boiserie through which one enters a "mystical" space that leads to the basement: a concrete staircase winds through a double-height space dominated by the red color of the clay that covers the walls, which ends in the wine cellar. The bottles, resting on leather "saddles", are arranged inside a full-height metal and glass casket. We then find a waiting room that leads to the toilets: amber boxes, in ceramic and clay.

To meet the needs of sustainability, only natural materials were used from a design point of view, such as clay, wood, iron, leather and rope.

The area is completed by four other exhibition halls deliberately unfinished and now closed to the public, with the idea of not delivering a definitive project but "fulfilling" it by listening to new ideas and energies in a process of collective transformation, in which the role of design will be to give it shape. All this has led to an innovative project, with a European flavor, which constitutes an important element for the redevelopment of the historic center of Naples.