Caffè Populaire, Milan – Italy

Design cannot exist without dialogue. For this year’s Fuorisalone, DWA Design Studio and Lambert & Fils wanted to host a space defined by hospitality, a site that would act as a sanctuary during the hustle of Milan design week.The result of the collaboration and common creative effort has been Caffè Populaire, a six-day concept bar bringing people and design into dynamic encounters through the essentiality of food. The duo transforms the industrial backdrop of an ex-panettone factory in the suggestive location of Alcova Popoli Uniti into a café inviting people to gather around a common table to share food and ideas.DWA Design Studio reimagines Alcova as a multisensory space filled with installations from a collective of international talents. Dramatic forms fill the rooms of the factory and create a conversation of opposites – raw and refined, past and present, becoming perfect set for Lambert & Fils new contemporary lighting collections.Lambert & Fils is a design studio specializing in handmade lighting, founded by Samuel Lambert and based in Montreal, Canada. From the spark of the first meeting between the two design studios (along with some excellent consulting by the press officer Marie de Cossette) was born the project of Caffè Populaire. The project was about turning the shared values into a collaboration, to create a down to earth and generous human encounter. The design result has been a series of scenographies for visitors, layering texture, light, furniture, objects and food to incite curiosity and conversation.A custom U-table was made from pre-cast slabs of Silipol fragments -the revolutionary ecological material composed of compressed marble and granite dust- and the circular bar was a combination of white and green terrazzo: both were designed by DWA Design Studio in collaboration with Italian manufacturer Mariotti Fulget. As for the table settings, meals at Caffè Populaire were served on Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance’s Caractère collection, designed for the 250-year-old French porcelain makers Revol. Antoine Architectural Finishes swathed the communal table base and chairs in a muted green and created a large plaster backdrop as well as a dramatic red nook with tactile walls.