The bakery opens onto the street with a large glass front, through which the interior seems to project out into the city and vice versa. The shop’s visibility and appeal are such that they catch the eye of passers-by and drivers alike, thanks in part to the small green planter that the bakery chose to ‘donate’ to the city. As soon as you step inside, there is a strong sense of being drawn into a real-life painting – a blank canvas on which the bread and all the other products can stand out to their best advantage with their colours and shapes. The counter and furnishings are clad in white to highlight the vibrant hues of the products on display, and the entire space becomes a luminous backdrop against which the golden tones of the bread are set.
The workshop becomes an integral part of the space, adorned with a filigree-like ceramic cladding, and is the setting for the frenetic work of skilled hands as they knead, create and fire… The workshop is no longer a space to be hidden away but an environment where human knowledge and creativity are revealed, and for this reason it is almost imbued with a sense of sacredness, which is reflected in the care and quality of the detail. Even the light fittings seem to burst forth from this space, as if to signify a priority that is not merely temporal (linked to the methods of production and display) but, above all, intellectual (bread derives first and foremost from a people’s knowledge and level of civilisation), and they extend across the shop counter as a metaphor for the ceaseless transmission of knowledge to future generations.
A slender frieze, made up of vertical wooden slats, runs all the way round the walls, almost as if the ceiling were resting (or floating) on a hundred ‘ears of wheat’.