This watch boutique design in Milan created the new store of Ruzza Orologi & Bags, a dealer of fine watches and luxury bags founded by Lorenzo Ruzza, in a stone-fronted building near Largo Augusto. arcHITects designed the whole project: the shop fronts, the sales floor, the showroom and the owner’s private office.

Three windows, two brands

The façade keeps its classical stone frame and its three openings. Two windows present the watches and one the bags, with gold lettering on black signs that make the split readable from the street. A black revolving door in the central bay works as the secure entrance a watch dealer needs, without the feel of a security airlock.

Dark and light surfaces

Inside, the palette is built on contrast. Large-format porcelain stoneware with a stone effect covers the floor and the walls: light and veined on the back wall and underfoot, black with white veins on the counter and the central display island. A full wall of black lacquered cabinets holds the watches in small lit niches. The dark ceiling and the track spotlights recede, so the eye goes to the pieces on display. Porcelain was chosen over natural stone for its resistance to wear and stains in a space with constant foot traffic.

Showcases that work as lamps

Every display case has its own light. The watches sit in illuminated niches set into the black wall. In the windows, the bags and watches are shown in lit boxes mounted on vertical poles. Each box rotates around its pole, so the display can face the street, the sales floor or a client at the counter, and the windows can be rearranged without moving any furniture. The light comes from inside the cases, so reflections on the glass stay low and the colours of leather and metal read correctly.

Showroom and private office

Beyond the sales floor, the store continues into a showroom and the private office of the owner, where the most important purchases are discussed. Here the walls are lined with backlit onyx-effect panels framed in brushed metal, and the room is enclosed and quiet, clearly separate from the shop.

A project built on details

The store is designed down to the smallest element, and the details carry the brand as much as the signs on the façade. The words “Passion for Watches” are engraved in a metal plate set into the stone-effect floor, where clients step on them as they walk in. The portrait of the founder, Lorenzo Ruzza, is cut in gold metal and mounted on the main wall. The rotating showcases, the lit niches, the brushed metal frames around the onyx-effect panels and the gold lettering on black are drawn as one system. Every surface a client touches or looks at was considered as part of the same project.

The watch boutique design in Milan for Ruzza shows how arcHITects works on retail spaces where security, display and atmosphere have to fit together. See more of our Ho.Re.Ca. and offices projects, our approach to hospitality and retail design, and the studio.

Design: HIT arcHITects – Piantini