San Gallo grocery store
Team
Pietro Canova, Martina Dal Pont
Categories
Interior design
Timeline
2019
Location
Italy, Venice
Typology
Commercial building
This project has been commissioned by the owner of a restaurant located near San Marco’s Square in Venice. A part of the restaurant itself was used as a para-pharmacy during the last five years, but the income generated was quite low due to the position slightly off the main tourist path crowded with people and the kind of business, which was aimed more at the local community.
Due to this characteristic, an important feature that will influence our design proposal is the presence of big groups of Chinese tourists having lunch in the restaurant main room, directly connected to the project space.
Our proposal was to create a high-end space where the finest Italian products can be sold, rather than a cramped shop filled with merchandise. The goal was to attract not only the tourists passing by, but also customers going specifically to this new gourmet shop to find goods not available in a traditional supermarket.
Flow control
One of the issues that the client addressed from the beginning was the circulation problem inside the shop. The shoppers were going to the same shelf every time, and even in this small scale, they completely avoided some parts of the shop. Our design started from the analysis of the spaces and the flow inside the shop. Indeed, with two entrances, one reserved for huge groups and one for occasional buyers, it was necessary to create two proper circulation paths.
The choice of the material is focused on giving a high-end feeling to the space, working on the contrast between the ceiling, the furniture, and the paving, realized with a light wood parquet. To control the roaming of the customers around the shop, we used the furniture itself, with shelves that are 2.4 meter high. In this way, we can also create new spaces that were not existing previously, like a storage space for the merchandise and one reserved for the pharmaceutical products.
To enhance the discovery approach, we managed to design five modules realized with dark, pure iron that can be exchanged one to another, with different sizes accommodating different products.
