Excerpt: ELAV Kitchen & Beer is a café interior designed by Francesca Perani Enterprise and Marg Studio. The project’s concept integrates existing, significant architectural elements with new key features, such as the earth bar, the opening onto a courtyard and the draught beer systems. The specially studied rebranding allows the ambience to convey the close connection of the independent Bergamo brewery to its community, nature, and the land that provides the raw materials, to the research and experimentation well matched to the traditions that give origin to this ever-developing firm.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by Architect] Beer, eatery and design in one of the most characteristic streets in Bergamo’s old upper town, Italy. Independent brewery ELAV, an original, homegrown business renowned locally and throughout Europe for its product research and care, unveils a new design concept combining whole food and craft beer.
The specially studied rebranding allows the ambience to convey the close connection of the independent Bergamo brewery to its community, nature, and the land that provides the raw materials, to the research and experimentation well matched to the traditions that give origin to this ever-developing firm.
The founding values of ELAV’s products have been reinterpreted with a dramatic and welcoming setting. The project’s concept integrates existing, significant architectural elements with new key features, such as the earth bar, the opening onto a courtyard and the draught beer systems.
The brewery’s mission, strongly linked to rural life and agriculture, is reinterpreted in the 8-metre long bar at the centre of the main hall: an “earthen” bar constructed using a unique cladding resin mixed with grit and hay. This important element, instantly recalling the genuine world of agriculture and craft, is the focal point in the space, linking the service and public areas, connecting guests and staff, thus offering a shared experience.
A draught beer system descends from above onto the centre of the bar. With seven brushed steel pipes, each specific to a single type of beer. The beer line, usually carrying the drink to the taps for serving, branches out into a diversified image, echoing both the routes of pipes in breweries and the metal articulations of the lighting system.
A suspended system of galvanised steel pipes twists following the shape of the reinforced concrete lacunar ceiling. It delicately illuminates the main room and the intimate dining area offering the customers a warm and homely light.
A theatrical end wall, purposely set up, illuminates the restaurant creating a fictitious opening onto a courtyard, where a continuous, walnut coloured boiserie leads the guests into a rural world with its barns and traditional structures, in touch with nature.
The main space is decorated using a system of metal grills with a geometrical texture recalling the concrete lacunar ceiling. On the lower floor, these subdividing elements help to separate private and exhibition space in the cellar, where 36 types of craft beers are showcased. Graphics used in the service areas also demonstrate the attention to detail applied to the renovation work.
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