Nativo
Showroom
Designed by HNK.
An architectural sculpture in vivid colors
Transforming a 2.000 sqm hall into an exquisite and modern showroom for Nativo - premium interior & exterior finishings distributor - has brought lots of challenges, as well as beautiful achievements to me and my team. We’ve designed a bold, creative space that gives inspiration and offers beautiful design solutions for future homeowners. Even if the place was spacious, it had a downside - strong, metallic beams were crossing the hall, which made the design process a bit difficult. Together with my fellow designers and architects, we’ve figured out a creative way to hide them: we’ve made the whole space look like a harmonious sculpture in bright colors, with many shapes and tones that show the transition from one area to another.
The most imposing area of the showroom - the reception - is easily distinguished from the rest due to the orange tiles that guide visitors’ steps to this area. The tilted angles, the rounded corners, the square-shaped office, the modern “sculpture” right in the middle, which is actually a cylindrical pillar covered in metallic strips, together with the unconventional lighting system that fills up the space - all these elements make the entrance area remarkable and unconventional.
Since the hall serves as the showroom of Nativo, a local distributor of premium tiles and outstanding floors (among other products), the floor here should speak for itself. We’ve turned it into a huge easel, becoming the main attraction of the space. For the reception, we chose a mix of tiles that replicate the marble and cement textures. This kind of graphic approach for the floor, with strong contrasts and geometric lines, has become a HNK signature in terms of interior design.
Close to the entrance, we’ve chosen to expose grand, beautiful ceramic tiles that look like marble, a type of decoration gaining more and more popularity in recent years. Each tile is impressive in size: it’s 2.6 meters tall and has soft tones and textures of white, black, beige and brown. Put together and nicely lit up, these tiles are truly eye-catching and stand out from the other areas of the showroom.
Nativo Showroom is composed of 3 areas: right at the entrance, we have the Marazzi corner, the internationally renowned Italian brand of high-quality ceramic tiles. Then, the second area follows - the display shelves. It’s preceded by an orange wall and a long, gray corridor with an unique ceiling where we’ve built huge, trapezoidal shapes that tone down the great height of the hall.
We’ve created a sliding system for the display shelves, so that visitors can easily navigate through the multiple options of tiles.
The third area of the showroom is dedicated to client meetings. We’ve designed a special identity for this area, a nature’s oasis to enliven discussions between clients or architects and Nativo consultants. The beauty and simplicity of nature have inspired us to cover the semicircular walls in Marazzi green terracotta tiles, in order to complete the ambience already created by the presence of palm trees in this area. Right in the middle, we’ve placed a big table made of a block of natural wood. The table is surrounded by orange and green velvet chairs, in the same nature-inspired theme.
The whole area is illuminated by a “shower” of horizontal light fixtures, concentrically disposed, that emphasize the circular shape of the table and of the entire meeting area.
At the end of the showroom hall, we find the parquet expo area. The display shelves are placed vertically on a metallic shaft and in the middle of this area there is another meeting table.
The transition between the parquet and the moquette expo area is marked by an orange tunnel. After passing through it, clients discover two huge, 4-meter picture frames in Art Deco style, disposed on the walls. This is how we’ve decided to expose the moquette variety at Nativo: the hundreds of textures, thickness and colors of moquette create two big, vivid paintings that draw attention by their complexity and uniqueness. In the lower area of these paintings we’ve placed custom-made, HNK furniture pieces made of colored MDF, where we’ve exposed many catalogs with moquette samples.
If we look back now, Nativo showroom has been a test of creativity that challenged us to run away from the predictable and aim for the extraordinary. This kind of approach has been more than suitable for this client, given the fact that we’re talking about an interior design finishings showroom, which by its nature is a source of inspiration for places that look and feel like home in an original way.
