Factory 1895 - Lavazza
FACTORY 1895 - LAVAZZA
Up-a Uboldi Paolo Architetti
YEAR
2020
LOCATION
Metropolitan City Of Turin, Piedmont, Italy
TYPE
Cultural › Museum
Educational › Other
Industrial › Factory Research Facility
1895 Coffee Designers by Lavazza is a new brand of the Lavazza Group focused on single-origin and blended specialty coffees, which seeks to combine the search for origins from independent and sustainable plantations with the highest technology in coffee processing.
The project involves the complete refurbishment of an existing building, located in the historic Settimo Torinese plant, which can be both a high-tech production site and an accessible place open to visitors, with a perspective of total transparency of both the coffee selection cycle and its processing.
The visit experience, which is absolutely innovative for an industrial plant of this type, aims to place the production machines at the center; the machines thus become both the heart and the beating brain around which all the environments revolve.
An industrial landscape is to be crossed, through a highly immersive path. The entire production plant has therefore been inserted at the center of the building, while the other functional areas gravitate around it, as separate but complementary parts within the same building.
Our intervention was therefore aimed at creating three different interconnected areas that would allow visitors to visit both the beating heart of the factory, which is always in operation during visits, and also to understand the entire coffee cycle from plantation to cup, through a highly experiential and immersive path.
The first area, which consists of the entrance and some educational rooms, is separated from the production to tell the story of the search for the best coffees in the world.
It is an educational and introductory path to understanding the industrial process that visitors begin to get a glimpse of in the last room, where, separated by glass, they can observe the arrival and the optical and laser selection of green coffee.
Once past the first few rooms, visitors immediately come into contact with the center of the visit: the production plant.
The machines have been carefully studied in terms of finishes so as to make them all 1895-customised.
They are constantly in motion, but the visitor can walk past them safely thanks to a “bridge” built above them which, thanks to a steelwork structure fixed to the existing columns, allows you to “fly over” the production area.
The external backlighting creates a luminous ribbon in the landscape amongst all the machines.
The bridge has been designed so that it can be totally dismantled for maintenance, thanks to the internal covering made of bamboo, a material selected for its characteristics in terms of mechanical resistance and sustainability, as well as being a very common grass in coffee production areas.
On the bridge, it is possible to follow all the stages of coffee production at a glance, thanks to the windows on the silos and the transport system.
Particular emphasis is placed on the roasting area, located at the start of the route, and the blending area where visitors can closely appreciate the blending of the essences invented by Luigi Lavazza from a small auditorium.
Once off the “bridge”, visitors discover the quality control laboratory through the large windows facing the production area, even though it is clearly separate.
At the end of the tour, visitors can taste the coffee inside an elegant cafeteria where, resting on two circular counters, they can admire the factory through a large fireproof window.
During the tasting, the flavors and aromas of the coffee are enhanced by the projections on the upper golden domes, part of the exhibit designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates of London.