Totalook: interview with the designer
Interview with Studio Lemon
An ice-cream parlour in the heart of Murcia welcomes customers in a vibrant, comfortable interior, where the shapes and colours used in the premises’ design evoke the sweet flavours of the home-made ice-creams and desserts. We chatted to Marta Miñarro, owner of Studio Lemon, which handled the architectural design and selected the various finishes from the Medley by Ergon collection to express the ice-cream parlour’s original, unique personality.
What is the philosophy of your interior design projects?
Our philosophy is always based on listening to our clients’ needs. We design what they want to convey and give it form, making optimal use of every space.
We have the good fortune to enjoy complete design freedom, and that’s what our clients like about us! We never produce anything that resembles what we’ve done before; our projects are always different. We don’t have a specific style; we love working in response to the client’s needs and spaces - this is our distinguishing feature as a firm. Interior design depends a great deal on the location, the position, the business to be conducted there... so every space has to be different and unique.
We are very happy to apply colour in our projects, and the ice-cream parlour enabled us to fully develop all the expressive potential of our interior design ideas.
The project
What excited you about the Heladería Miramar project? Were there any technical criticalities in the design and construction phase?
We all had a great time during both the creative phase and in the project’s execution. The client gave us free rein to express our ideas, and that facilitated the subsequent realisation and construction process. The aim of the interior design we created was to convey exactly what the ice-cream parlour has to offer: home-made ice-creams and desserts.
The most difficult thing was to meet the deadlines so the shop could be opened in summer and the clientele would be able to enjoy their home-made ice-cream. The result was a success, popular with both the client and its customers.
For the ice-cream parlour’s coverings, you chose the various finishes in the Medley by Ergon collection. What struck you about this collection? How did it respond to your needs?
We love applying colour to our projects. In this case, the main requirement was to design a neutral interior, where shapes and colours would be used to convey the idea of sweetness typical of home-made ice-creams and desserts.
The Medley collection offered us just what we needed: distinctive colours and shapes that naturally evoked the product sold on the premises. The various Venetian Terrazzo finishes, with their different flake shapes and sizes, gave versatility and originality to the spaces. For the floors, we selected White Classic 90x90, while for the walls we chose the Classic finish in Blue colour, 90x90 size; the counter was covered with Blue Rock 60x120 in an attractive total combination of shapes and colours that created an interior of great personality.
How important is it to choose materials like porcelain stoneware when designing commercial interiors?
Porcelain stoneware is the ideal solution for commercial premises, which have high specific technique requirements. Porcelain stoneware is resistant to high traffic and offers patterns and textures of great visual impact, as well as effectively expressing architects’ ideas in terms of design and creativity.
The project
15 March 2022
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