Fuori Salone ’09
"Il percorso di Petra": an urban design idea
Petra door points - design by Brizzi+Riefenstahl Studio for ACEM


ACEM – an Italian company specialising in the production of wooden doors marketed in Italy and abroad – is present for the first time at Milan’s Fuori Salone, and, in the year of Euroluce, makes its presence felt with a shining idea: to enhance its visibility during the week of the Furniture Exhibition, a week packed with events and novelties, in addition to a “classical” location in via Barbavara 5, ACEM uses a multi-installation entitled "Il percorso di Petra". Totems set up at key points in the city – e.g., Corso Como, Porta Genova, Largo la Foppa – form an itinerant scenery that blends into the natural flow of visitors who come to Milan for the Design Week. An idea perfectly in keeping with new urbanity trends to present a collection of design doors featuring an innovative handle-free opening system, characterised by interesting colour combinations and embodying avant-garde technological research.

Created by Brizzi+Riefenstahl Studio, a duo that has been active for over ten years in the field of industrial design and interior decoration, Petra was inspired by an eighteenth century portal. With the aim to “distance themselves” from the omnipresent minimalist style, designers Antonio Brizzi and Babette Riefenstahl endowed the door with a special quality of elegance and beauty that stands out against the geometry of contemporary environments. Thanks to a painstaking analysis of the materials and extremely clean lines, they were able to transfuse the language of handicraft into industrial production, giving life to an innovative door characterised by a non-handle, a recess for the hand, underscored by contrasting colours, that encourages the intuitive opening/closing gesture.

Relying on its fifty-year experience, ACEM has designed an exclusive  magnetic opening and closing system that is both highly efficient and muted, and has made an artful use of the materials to fashion a full range of doors made-to-measure to meet a multiplicity of aesthetic and functional requirements.

Petra is available in a variety of versions, in precious wood species – such as ovangkol, chestnut and national walnut – that express all their naturality, thanks to the thickness of the wood and ad hoc natural treatments – or having ‘cement’ enamelled finishes, with choice of raw and velvet effects. The chromatic combinations adopted for the handles encompass shiny, translucent colours, the entire RAL palette. A chromed surface is yet another option. There is a choice of four opening systems: door mounted flush with the wall that opens to 90°, hinged version that opens to 180°, a classical sliding configuration, and a version that slides into the wall on a telescopic hideaway track.
 
Inspired by the past and conceived for the future, Petra marks the beginning of a new 'era' for ACEM, now headed by Consuelo and Paolo, daughter and son of company founder Vittorio Cortese, who manage with commitment and passion a technologically advanced enterprise where attention to the environmental has always been a major concern and now a focus on design is a prior consideration.