Driven by its desire to share its values and success with the world, Lavazza wanted to communicate its story and the uniqueness of its brand and products without creating just a museum of coffee. Originally envisaged as a private museum, the project brief expanded through creative workshops between our team and Lavazza, transforming the Lavazza Museum into a multi-sensory, immersive new public visitor experience and destination – the first of its kind in Italy.

The total project budget was 2.9 million euros and encompasses five galleries over 1,200 square metres of floor space. The Museum is part of Lavazza’s new ‘Nuvola’ headquarters complex – located in the heart of a regenerating urban district in Turin. The team included many industry leaders, such as Cino Zucchi Architects, Oscar-winning Italian set designer Dante Ferretti, design philosopher Virginio Briatore and Michelin-starred chef Ferran Adrià.

Our design concept centred around the ‘unique blend’: the magic that comes from Lavazza’s winning combination of tradition and innovation. Combining age-old rituals with contemporary design, interaction and immersive technology, the Museum gives visitors an opportunity to discover and understand Lavazza’s philosophy and find their own connection to the brand and its stories. Over and above promoting a product, Lavazza has always nourished the idea that a cup of coffee is not just an enjoyable brew; it is an opportunity to share new ideas with others. The design takes the visitor into the life of the family and the company.

We anticipated that visitors to the Lavazza Museum would include many media-savvy ‘explorers’, looking for experiences that are social and memorable. To engage visitors of all ages and from all backgrounds, we built in a menu of multi-sensory experiential techniques, from media-rich to hands on experiences.

The Museum forms a narrative journey through five galleries. Each one of the five galleries has different content and design, resulting in ‘five museums in one’. Casa Lavazza required an intimate space for the story of the family, with a warm wooden floor. The Fabbrica space was concrete to reflect the idea of the factory. The Atelier is like a photography studio – very white and clean. Between each gallery, we designed simple and refreshing thresholds, which act as ‘palette-cleansers’ between the experiences.

Throughout, visitors personalise their journey with an interactive RFID-enabled Lavazza cup, which they take with them and ‘fill’ with their own experiences and stories. In the final gallery, L’Universo, an ethereal 360-degree multimedia space enables visitors to use their cup to trigger an evocative projection that unfolds around them, immersing them in their own unique sensory world, and allowing them to share it with others.

With growing public awareness, an emerging marketing campaign and an overwhelmingly positive international press response, the Lavazza Museum has exceeded expectations. More than 35,000 people have visited the Museum in the first six months, with visitor numbers per month continuing to grow. Mental Floss called it ‘Another Reason to Visit Italy’ and Lonely Planet wrote ‘the Museo Lavazza features as the perfect place to learn everything that there is to know about coffee and its production.’

Clearly, the Lavazza Museum is becoming a catalyst for revitalisation and regeneration in the city. Turin is already in the process of radical change; with this project, Cino Zucchi Architects have restored and reimagined a former industrial district as a new cultural area for Turin’s future. The Lavazza Museum is a genuine investment in the city by the Lavazza company, which is playing its part in regenerating one of the city’s working class neighbourhoods.