The high standards of Italian design

The new shopping gallery in Milan Malpensa airport, including the flagship Piazza del Lusso opened in May 2014, marks the first step in an expansion and renovation project announced in November 2013 by the company Sea in anticipation of Expo 2015. With its 8,000 square metre floor space and 46 new store areas designed to accommodate the world’s leading luxury brands, this part of Terminal 1 is intended as far more than a transit area for passengers. It is a destination in its own right, a place that stands out for its attention to detail and use of innovative materials, combining design and functionality in an infrastructure that comes up to the high standards of Italian style. In these spaces, users can stop to freshen up in a restroom that is at once functional, engaging and aesthetically attractive. The project, created by designers from Florim Solutions in keeping with the stylistic standards of the new Galleria del Lusso, involved demolishing the existing restrooms and designing new spaces that combine functional rationality with a meticulous choice of furnishings and surface coverings.
The uniqueness of the restroom is already evident from the outside, where a giant screen measuring about six metres in length and two metres in height projects images of passersby and allows them to interact with programmes and videos. It is a kind of multimedia invitation to enter a place devoted to personal care and relaxation, two of the most important needs of airport users. The wall on which the screen is mounted, clad with porcelain panels from the Industrial collection by Floor Gres, reflects the colours and materials used in the restroom, while the luxury of the Gallery seems to penetrate seamlessly throughout the vestibule spaces. The porcelain tile flooring reproduces the design and lustre of alabaster while the walls feature three-dimensional tiles made of the same material (Alabastri collection from Rex). The interior spaces of the restroom — female, male, disabled and nursery toilets — display a harmonious combination of finishes in various shades of grey. In the common areas, the large-format porcelain tiles (Industrial collection from Floor Gres) chosen for the floors, perimeter walls and surface tops create a visual sensation of harmonious continuity, even where they meet the bright glass strips (Casamood) used for the walls above the washbasins and urinals. The use of different wall tiles makes each toilet cubicle unique. The male toilets adopt the colours and sizes of the Styletech collection (Floor Gres), featuring a wood effect for the floors and a metal effect for the walls. Each cubicle in the female toilets uses different colours chosen from the Alabastri collection (Rex). The unfurnished walls are covered with decorated panels from Floor Gres featuring a graphic design with a playful, almost pop flavour, thereby avoiding the risk of potentially anonymous visual elements.