Architect：Maurizio Lai Architects

Location：Piazza Alvar Aalto, 20124, Milan, Italy; | ;

Project Year：2019

Category：Restaurants

There is a contemporary idea of Japan in the project that the Italian architect Maurizio Lai has developed for IYO Aalto, the second restaurant of the group after IYO Taste Experience, the only Japanese restaurant in Italy awarded a Michelin star. 

Subtle references to tradition give way to a contemporary and pure design language, conceiving a place where essential materials and light merge into a different tale. Maurizio Lai evokes the Japanese culture through a decisive sensibility, far from prevailing stereotypes and clichés. He defines a restaurant with an absolute flavour, in deliberate search of deep symmetries and tactile emotions.

Canaletto walnut and porphyry represent the dominant materials. Ethereal, imperceptible and fluid, glass knowingly enters the story with elegance, as nuance, light or colour, as if it were water.

IYO Aalto is defined by the discreet and constant presence of signs that distinguish all surfaces: small brass inlays drowned in the wooden slats of the floors; swallow-tails - also in brass - that recall the culture of high carpentry, up to the furniture screws.

The leather seats, with a black elm structure and a leather-coloured custom-made cladding, also used for the upholstered furniture in the main dining, are produced by Poliform. The Contract Division of the brand was in charge of the engineering and manufacturing of the whole custom-made furnishing, joinery, glassware and stone works.

The unique space of 320 square meters, embraces the spacious open kitchen, a broad wine cellar, an exclusive Sushi Banco and a Gourmet Restaurant.Between the Sushi Banco and the Gastronomic Restaurant.

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