Trend Watch

Rome’s Take on Lifestyle Retail

New ‘white box’ shopping complex is part retail center, part life-as-art experience.

Published

15 years ago

September 8, 2009

Mary Scoviak

The White Gallery will bring a new kind of shopping/entertainment concept to Rome when it opens in mid-September. The roughly 54,000-square-foot development will be the Eternal City’s first large lifestyle retail complex. Shoppers can browse three floors of high-end fashion brands, design elements, art, music, books, restaurants and technology.

The pioneering project features a “white box” aesthetic. Its open plan, double-height ceiling and wide sightlines are intended to showcase the people and merchandise within the space. A free-flowing circulation pattern surrounds shoppers with colors, scents, sounds and flavors.

“White Gallery is a place conceived for the senses. The idea is all about easy living in a less conventional place where shopping is an experience,” says Michela Vianello, art director for Andromeda Intl. (Venice, Italy), the lighting designer/manufacturer that created the series of lighting sculptures, entitled Fluxus, that both illuminate the walkways and aid in wayfinding.

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