Gucci Garden, Florence
Design Credit:
Alessandro Michele, Gucci
gucci.com
Dazzlingly ambitious, Gucci Garden brings hospitality, heritage and glamour into one iconic space. Creative director Alessandro Michele is behind the concept, which aims to reinforce Gucci’s standing among the world’s most desirable luxury brands.
Gucci Garden extends across the three floors of the 14th-century Palazzo della Mercanzia, also home to Gucci Museo. Housing a store, museum, restaurant and cinema, it takes experiential retail to extravagant extremes, and serves as a destination for shoppers, tourists and lovers of design.
Part museum, part store, part restaurant, Gucci Garden proves ‘the past is very much part of the present at Gucci’.
Welcoming and accessible, the new concept democratises the Gucci experience, with people able to tour the grand space from both a cultural and consumer perspective.
For example, on the ground floor, the brand’s high-end offerings are contrasted against a ‘museum shop’ retail space that includes more affordable items for purchase as ‘mementoes’. The retail and gallery spaces are complemented by the Gucci Osteria, which serves up playful high-end takes on diner-style menu items in a haute cuisine setting.
Though ‘open to all’, Gucci Garden maintains exclusivity through elements such as charging for museum entry, and through its one-of-a-kind collections. The store is home to numerous exclusive product collections that are branded accordingly; packaging is also unique to Gucci Garden, ensuring that every takeaway is unmatched.
The space itself takes its cues from traditional Florentine design, with antique furniture, vibrant colour schemes and the incorporation of merchants’ coats of arms. From hand-aged marble floor tiles to hand-painted wardrobes, Gucci Garden celebrates the house’s love of craftsmanship at every turn.