Bank in Donoratico / Massimo Mariani

Architect: Massimo Mariani
Location: Livorno, Italy
Project Team: Elda Bellone, Roseda Gentile, Alessandro Mariani
Project Year: 2007
Photographs: Alessandro Ciampi

The project concerns the redesign of a building at Donoratico (in Livorno) located next the head office of the bank “Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Castagneto Carducci” (also designed by architect Mariani in 2002).

The building is on two levels. From the functional point of view the ground floor houses the areas most strictly connected with the banking business like the big hall with counter and advisory services for customers. The branch management offices as well as the loan management and administrative offices are encapsulated inside a long slice of coloured bureaus on the right of the entrance.

A number of other banking offices, safe deposits and services areas (vault, archives, etc…) are in the basement.

Inside the hall, upper the round waiting seat, there is a plasterboard ceiling randomly perfored. Like a big drop, it comes out from the elongated corridor giving light to directional bureaus, services offices and common spaces.

A single graphic sign features all public spaces which are accessible to customers. All the furnishings and wooden wall are designed with vertical strip in red, blue, yellow and green.

In this way areas that in banks have traditionally been some what staid and “bleak” have been reinvented to give then an amusing and more optimistic look.