Reserved document of Pizza Experience Design.
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The new pizzerias between tradition and entertainment:
a new relation with innovation and design
by Nicola R. Ticozzi
Director of the High Standard Experience Design courses
by POLI.design – Consortium of Politecnico di Milano.
With the contribution of Gianpietro Sacchi, architect and POLI.design lecturer.
Pizzerias are changing. From repetitive and often stereotyped expressions of typicality and tradition that are equal or similar all around Italy and abroad, with no originality and design, pizzerias are starting to propose, with the contribution of architects, a new image and new formats that are most likely to give a strong impulse to the transformation of a sector which is numerically very relevant.
45,000 premises specialised in the supply of pizza all over Italy and another uncountable number around the world, represent a very wide marketplace both for designers attentive to the aesthetic signs of change, and the firms producing technical equipment, furniture, lighting devices, materials, in touch with the evolution under way.
Pizza is a product that at the beginning was meant to be eaten in the street, also while walking, it has then found a “home” in environments that are usually aesthetically very simple: whitewashed walls, dark tables, conspicuous oven, pictures of Naples and other picturesque places of Southern Italy and rustic decors on the walls. Places that are usually designed by the owners, often with neon lights, noise and characterised by a quick service and standardised menus that besides quite traditional pizzas include only a few other predictable dishes.
One format and a set of images linked to pizza that has been exported abroad without much creativity but with great success.
During the seventies the “modernisation” of pizzerias has decreased but not eliminated the whitewashed or wooden beaded walls and the tables with no tablecloth, in favour of pastel environments and plain colour tablecloths, with still very bright but also more diffused lights during the day: venues that are less typical and progressively more anonymous and standardised, with ever less identity and character. At present in some cities such as Rome, Turin, Naples and Milan, venues with a completely different look and taste are opening, and the only thing they have in common with traditional pizzerias is only the pizza. They are environment of design and atmosphere that always involve the creative planning intervention of an architect, are designed with a spectacular taste and elements that give a strong visual impact. They are usually multi-functional, that is they are at the same time premises equipped for the happy hour, pizzerias and lounges for the evening, with extended opening hours, from 6pm until late at night.
Locations and dimensions change and become wider and able to include different functions.
There is also a birth of specialised or franchising chains that are identified by refined environments and design choices, warm colours, soft lighting, relaxing atmosphere and engaging menus rich in information that represent a world of reference around the product pizza, a “symbolic” universe that adds emotional values to consumption.
The transformation that is starting to be seen in pizzerias is directly influenced by the evolution in the night leisure industry, which is modifying not only the premises’ layout but also the cities’ framework.
Every day different “new entertainment” venues open, such as music bars, art cafes, design and ethnic bars, show restaurants, spaces very different one from the other and that can’t be classified in terms of typology, also because the research continues and proposes ever new architectures, styles and very differentiated services and consumption offers.
Also the relation between interiors and exteriors changes and shop-windows become “permeable”, thus letting customers experience the new captivating architecture even before entering it.
The new venues are open only in the evening/night, that is from the happy hour on, or they might be working both during the day and at night, but they still have some common features.
In most cases they are venues characterised by strong aesthetic and functional features, the service and entertainment are wisely measured and involve sight, hearing and taste in a multi-sensory, involving experience able to convey emotions.
This combination of elements contributes to the creation of a pleasant, comfortable, involving situation that can be summarised with the word “atmosphere”.
The aesthetisation of everyday life: design is the protagonist, always.
Our society is undergoing an important change in which paradigms and trends are transforming: we live an epoch of aesthetisation of everyday life in which design is present and transversal in every place and product.
In this sense, night entertainment venues play a very relevant role because, like real laboratories for experimentation and launch of design styles, they can be considered the places where trends are born and develop and then spread reaching also very different fields, anticipating the expectations and taste of a high number of consumers.
Not only purchases and consumption, but “experiences”
Actually, it is interesting to note how quickly tend to change, as they are influenced by the success of other premises and the aesthetic and consumption features that characterise them, also spaces meant for a more daily fruition like shops of different kinds or multi retail stores.
Furthermore, during the last years a new shared way to conceive the moment of consumption has caught on: it is meant no more only a mere satisfaction of a need, but it must be entertaining, gratifying and generally speaking, involving.
Entertainment, the innovation engine also in the new pizzerias
Consumers are more and more demanding, critical and attentive and look for novelty and beauty, and consequently the key words have become design, innovation, hybridisation and atmosphere.
Everything must be able to entertain, gratify, and be pleasant. All the places where food or drinks and purchased or consumed, but also more than this, must offer real “situations” able to represent and express what is happening within them.
At this point products, atmosphere, service and design mingle together, thus becoming a whole that constitutes the offer of the premises.
Of course this modifies the way spaces are conceived, the way they are planned, furnished, organised, also in terms of opening hours, customers’ flow, consumption offer, service style.
Today all premises, also the more traditional ones like pizzerias, must be able to convey emotions and pleasure, starting with the planning codes, materials, furniture, chromatic choices, sound and lighting atmospheres, and technologies.
Therefore no more mass-produced premises, but really innovative layouts with a strong personality.
This complex evolution has lead to the establishment of the High Standard Training course in Pizza Experience Design, that deals with and studies in depth the process under way, also through an experiential marketing and sociology of consumption point of view, and teaches designers new updated skills in all the planning and technical facets that are today necessary to work in this “new” highly potential sector.
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