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Combining the essence of Buenos Aires and Milan in one place, the new flagship store of La Martina has recently opened in the heart of Corso Garibaldi. The company was founded by Lando Simonetti and opened its first flagship store in 1985 with a style inspired by polo players and clubs. This new store, a few steps from the center of Milan, blends Argentinian and Milanese lifestyles to recount the soul of the brand and its relationship with the history of polo. The interior highlights the simplicity of life in the countryside – this atmosphere shared by all the brand’s stores around the world – as well as the sensation of refinement and glamour typical of the great European cities. This interweaving of grandeur and tranquility traces the history of the sport and conveys the company’s values of integrity, cosmopolitanism, and attention to detail. The complete restyling of the building’s façade and interior design was overseen by the studio led by architect Fabio Novembre, who took inspiration from the first shop in Buenos Aires where everything began, called La Casona.
The past is valorized by architectural and design choices that tell the story of an orientation towards the future and an openness towards the rest of the contemporary world. For example, the entire façade was restored using a single color, a pearl white embellished and emphasized by lighting. Inside, Novembre Studio chose to represent La Martina’s relationship with polo through specific material choices that strongly evoke the sport and Argentinian tradition: wood, leather, steel, and raw brick characterize both levels of the boutique, which is accessed through a large double-height space illuminated by a series of stylized-shaped lighting fixtures, supported by leather hangings reminiscent of horse bridles. Similar lighting solutions, which resemble an inverted dome, are also present in a second double-height part of the store, which is also enhanced through the natural light coming in from the skylight above. It is in this space that the spirit of La Casona is most intensely felt, through sports equipment, vintage tables and trunks, trophies, helmets, and boots.
Wood is also a protagonist here and constitutes one of the recurring materials of the project: found in the furnishings, floorings, and paneling, it is constantly in dialogue with the black steel of the beams, stairs, and the posts of the shelves bordered in bright green, which evoke the goal posts of the polo field.
On the upper floor of the store, two ad hoc solutions bring to life both the history of the company and the territory in which it was born: several integrated wall screens and lightbox highlight major milestones, and the floor is a reinterpretation of the classic motifs of Argentinian architecture and its checkerboard ceramic elements, revisited and achieved through the juxtaposition of two different wood tones.
All of this makes the Milanese flagship store an innovative retail place, full of limited edition products, with a mixture of digital and physical experiences, and complemented by a bistro in the same style of the store. Called El Bar del Polo, it is a corner devoted to the taste and flavors of Argentina.
“La Martina is polo and polo is La Martina – this is the axiom on which the project is founded”, stated Fabio Novembre. “Lando Simonetti knew how to share his passion, which has been brought into the architecture both with the history of the brand and the esthetic of La Casona and the essence of this sport through a series of more or less direct references”.
Location: Milan, Italy
Client: La Martina
Completion: 2023
Gross Floor Area: 350 m2
Interior Designer: Novembre Studio
Main Contractor: Perugini Making
Photography: Andrea Martiradonna, courtesy of Novembre Studio
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