Near Piazza San Marco in Venice, in the block of the 17th-century theater known as the “Ridotto” and in the
space once occupied by the Cinema San Marco, Louis Vuitton has opened a flagship store with an area of over 1000 square meters, organized on three levels. The building that contains the large retail space dates back to 1936, designed by Brenno Del Giudice in keeping with a compositional grammar that activates an interesting relationship between contemporary image and the historical city. At the corner between San Marco and Calle del Ridotto, the streetfront of the store extends along two sides of the entire building.
A corner portico facing towards the nearby piazza defines the zone of the main entrance. In collaboration with Exa Arezzo, Marzorati Ronchetti has developed and produced the entire sequence of shop windows and fixtures grafted into the openings of the building to create a sequence of display episodes of different kinds. Full-height showcases for the display of the collections; ‘niches’ for the accessories and smaller objects; full casements, crafted with a refined decorative texture based on the repetition of the graphic motif of the maison in a dynamic alternation of full and empty zones. Each window bears the interwoven logo of the letters “LV” or the full name, both backlit to bring out the golden shadings of the metal casements from the burnished bronze-color metal. The casements form an elegant, essential frame carefully inserted in the host architecture, presenting the staging of the displays of the French company to the street. Due to the location in the city subject to flooding during high tides, removable steel barriers have been provided in the same color and finish as the casements, to insert in vertical posts discreetly placed at the corners of each opening.