Sergio Rossi ephemeral store by Antonino Cardillo

Coinciding with Salone del Mobile 2010, Italian luxury footwear brand Sergio Rossi has launched a new temporary men’s shoe store in Milan on 14th April. The temporary store is part of a collaboration between Sergio Rossi and Wallpaper magazine which have launched a so-called Mens Footwear World Tour. Every stage of the World Tour will be marked with an equally unique architectural configuration.

The transient concept of the new store in Milan has been realised by the young Italian architect Antonino Cardillo. He has drawn inspiration from the architectural forms of several Milan architectures such as the Velasca Tower by BBPR to create a configuration akin to a cinematographic set. The resulting store is a temporary architectural structure encased in a permanent one. Wallpaper magazine has been working in collaboration with Sergio Rossi as creative consultants and has been integral to the development of the design and identity for the store.

For his design, Cardillo has referred to cinematographic mechanisms and sets with a certain regard to David Lynch’s “Inland Empire”. Cardillo explains: “The temporal production presented here attempts a transliteration of this structural idea in Lynch’s film: architecture for Sergio Rossi creates a game of returns between orders of ideal and reality, between interiors and exteriors. Exchanging dialogue, this architecture overlaps the diverse identities of the place: from the outline of the pre-existing 1980s shop, to the urban backdrop of the medieval Church of the Carmine, to the decorative Art Nouveau pieces of the palazzo in the alley nearby. So relationships, as well as happening in space, extend also into time, into dialogue, which is also critical interpretation, with signs already in existence.“