Image Credit : Tommaso Sacconi
Project Overview
Madison Avenue represents a key location for Valentino and its new flagship marks an important moment in its global retail strategy. The store expands the fashion house’s updated retail concept, which reinterprets the existing building’s structure to accommodate unique brand spaces. Each floor is centered on a distinctive visual narrative, with special attention given to the iconic Valentino red. The flagship houses the couture experience, exclusive VIP corners, a multidisciplinary art space, and distinct sales floors containing luxury ready-to-wear assortments. Client-centric by design, the store brings together hospitality, personalized customer care, and modern design concepts. Formerly a longstanding flagship space for Calvin Klein, Valentino spans three floors, with 12,300 square feet of selling space and 20,000 square feet overall.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Architect of Record: Atmosphere Design Group, LLC
Construction Manager: Shawmut Design and Construction
Engineer: Rosini Engineering
Lighting Designer: Lisa Marchesi Studio
Owner Representation: ROSSANA CAPURSO ATELIER LLC
Project Brief
The first Valentino flagship in 10 years, the design of the Madison Ave store creates unique spaces based on a reinterpretation of the building’s structure through different sales experiences.
Grand double-doors with sculptural marble handles open to 23-foot high ceilings and exposed steel columns. Bespoke elements, like a central green onyx display unit, complement different materials and textures such as marble carpets and concrete finishes.
The ground floor has several interpretations of the iconic Rosso Valentino: footwear’s travertine red floors and seating; ready-to-wear’s immersive, box-like effect reinforced by the red velvet cladding walls and seating.
The monumental staircase anchors the space, composed of red Travertino, white Botticino, and black Nero Marquina. The staircase’s red stone forms the perimeter of the adjacent ready-to-wear box, an example of how the materials and palettes are threaded throughout the flagship.
On the second floor, the women’s ready-to-wear collection has a giant red lacquered wardrobe structure and matching seating, contrasting with the checkered floor in white Botticino and black Nero Marquina marbles.
The two VIP ivory sitting rooms and dressing areas nod to the Maison’s workshops, designed to produce an ambiance of intimacy and exclusivity in an apartment-like setting. Bespoke seating and furniture are complemented by contemporary chandeliers by Roll & Hill and ceramic objects by Massimiliano Pipolo.
The basement is dedicated to menswear, with chromatic materials including stark concrete and a black parquet. Next door is warmer with lilac flooring matched with mirrored columns, bespoke glass displays, and angular green onyx shelving.
Project Innovation/Need
With dozens of custom finishes dramatically highlighting and differentiating the separate sales areas, Valentino’s updated concept has been well-received. Based on chromatic compositions and carefully-curated material palettes while highlighting the signature Valentino red, the flagship is the beacon of Italian style. With soaring fluted columns on the building’s neoclassical limestone facade from 1927 and exposed steel columns that run throughout the space, rationalist architecture coexists with warm, enveloping spaces created by careful material and color choices.
The building’s mezzanine is a concrete box that overlooks the ground floor on one side, dedicated to temporary art displays amplifying the work of a diverse roster of galleries and institutions. The space made its debut through a partnership with a New York museum, Magazzino Italian Art.
The cellar was designed around the original bank vault from the early 1900s, with plank-formed steel, reinforced concrete walls, and a 10-foot wide solid steel vault portal highlighting the torched jambs from when the doors were removed in the 1960s. The finishes are industrial, with dark oak flooring mixed with clear glass millwork.
Design Challenge
All stairs and stone were custom fabricated after an extensive quarry search from Valentino. Due to long lead times, custom fabrication, and shipment, the team templated and heavily coordinated everything down to the millimeter as there was zero tolerance on everything.
The staircase—made of red Travertino, white Botticino, and black Nero Marquina marble—was an intensive coordination process. The team digitally mapped and documented the existing structural conditions to ensure perfect alignment of the stair in conjunction with zero tolerance vertical surfaces. The team engaged numerous vendors to gather all field dimensions down to the millimeter, as well as templated all treads and risers, and partnered with the Italian stone manufacturer to ensure the zero tolerance dimensions were correct. In Italy, they fabricated and joined the multi-finish treads and risers to be shipped out in one piece. The field team carefully installed tread by tread on-site without any issues. The team completed the stair by installing the waterfall stone down the side and integrated the glass guardrail. This all had to come through the front door on Madison Ave, which required careful planning for building and pedestrian traffic.
Sustainability
A LEED consultant was involved with the project, which is targeting LEED Gold. Shawmut engaged all partners to deliver on specific requirements like waste stream diversion, air monitoring, document control, site signage, and weekly documentation.
Interior Design - Retail
This award celebrates innovative and creative building interiors, with consideration given to space creation and planning, furnishings, finishes and aesthetic presentation. Consideration given to space allocation, traffic flow, building services, lighting, fixtures, flooring, colours, furnishings and surface finishes.
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