At a newly renovated flagship in the design heart of Los Angeles, immersion is key. In keeping with the lineage of Italian design brand Molteni&C’s other locations, from London to Melbourne to Singapore, the two-story Robertson Boulevard location discards the conventional shopping experience. Rather than interacting with pieces in a showroom, visitors are invited into an art lover’s home—kitchen, living room, and all.
The high-visibility remodel marks Molteni&C’s continued expansion beyond the borders of its native Italy; this year alone, the brand plans to announce additional openings in Sydney and Lyon. It also acts as a staged example of Molteni&C’s “turnkey service,” in which the brand offers fully redone spaces to selects clientele.
In LA, Molteni&C’s creative director, architect Vincent Van Duysen, led the renovation. He brought in works by Jean Nouvel, Christophe Delcourt, and more, all while curating a visual dialogue between Molteni&C’s Italian panache and California’s signature aesthetics. Ahead of the relaunch, we sat down with Van Duysen to learn more about the journey to opening day and Angeleno influence on the store’s breezy, intuitive design.
You have served as Molteni&C’s creative director for 10 years. How has that sustained relationship with the brand informed the design language of the Los Angeles flagship, compared with projects earlier in your tenure?
After 10 years, the work becomes less about establishing an identity and more about giving that identity greater depth. In Los Angeles, I was interested in creating an environment that feels settled and confident, where the furniture is not perceived separately from the space around it. The project reflects a more developed idea of how Molteni&C can represent a complete way of living.
The store layout has been conceived in the style of an art collector’s home. What specific decisions support that idea?
The space was organized so that it is never read all at once. Views open gradually, rooms overlap visually, and the experience changes as you move through the store. There is a deliberate alternation between more open areas and more intimate ones, which gives the interior a domestic rhythm. Art, furniture, and objects are placed within these relationships rather than treated as separate layers, so the overall impression is closer to an inhabited residence than to a conventional retail interior.
The palette resonates with the light and sophistication of the West Coast. How did you approach translating that regional sensibility, without relying on tropes?
Rather than starting from an image of California, we started from the physical conditions of the place. The light is very present, so the materials needed to work with it rather than compete with it. We chose surfaces with different degrees of texture, reflection, and warmth, allowing the character of the rooms to shift naturally throughout the day. The result is connected to Los Angeles through atmosphere rather than through a recognizable stylistic reference.
This project reflects Molteni&C’s evolution from selling individual pieces to designing entire homes. Does that shift in model change your vision for the retail spaces?
Yes, because the focus moves from displaying objects to defining relationships between them. The dimensions of the rooms, the transitions from one area to another, the placement of furniture, and the lighting and material changes all become equally important. You are no longer designing a setting around a product; you are designing the conditions in which all the elements can belong together. That brings the project much closer to the logic of a residential interior.
The store places contemporary pieces, including your own Physis Kitchen models, alongside archival designs like the D.151.4 armchair by Gio Ponti from the Molteni&C Heritage Collection. How do you situate new designs in conversation with the brand’s archive?
For me, the most interesting way to work with the archive is to remove the distance between past and present. Historical pieces should not feel protected or isolated from everyday life. They should be allowed to sit naturally beside contemporary work and acquire new relevance through use and context. In Los Angeles, the Ponti armchair is treated as part of the interior rather than as an exhibit, and that is important: the history of the brand remains present without becoming retrospective.
Robertson Boulevard carries a distinct identity within Los Angeles’s cultural landscape. To what extent did the specificity of that location shape your material and spatial decisions?
The context encouraged us to avoid anything overly formal or monumental. The building has a direct relationship with the street, and we wanted the interior to retain that sense of accessibility while still feeling refined. The architecture remains relatively calm, allowing the rooms to feel generous and residential. The connection to Los Angeles is therefore less about quoting the city and more about achieving the right balance between openness, informality, and precision.
The storytelling of the flagship follows a sequencing map—kitchen to living area to Outdoor to Night collection. If someone only had five minutes to walk through, which single room or element would you want them to see?
I would take them to the point where the living area leads into the Physis Kitchen. For me, that transition explains the project very clearly. There is no abrupt change from one display to another; one space simply begins to influence the next. In a few seconds, you understand that the store has been conceived as a connected interior rather than as a collection of separate settings.
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