Il Ferrarino - Restaurant of Casablanca, Morocco

Il Ferrarino is an Italian cuisine restaurant located in the heart of Casablanca. The target of the project is to bring part of Italian cuisine to a foreign territory such as Morocco. The restaurant has been designed with two dining rooms, one on the ground floor with a direct connection to the surrounding neighborhood, and one in the mezzanine for more private and exclusive events. The atmosphere creates a formal environment where the client can not only taste the Italian cuisine but also, throughout our design, can feel the Italian soul of its owners mixed with the local Moroccan heritage.
The project takes place inside what has been an empty space and located on the ground floor of a recently restored residential building, an area that has never truly been used and was left to decay and vacant during its whole life.
Thanks to the generous interior heigh of this space we could arrange a mezzanine that gave us the opportunity to create different environments to satisfy different tastes. A converging entrance area frames the entrance and invites the customers to enter from all the roads, taking advantage of its corner position.
One of the first spaces you come in contact with is the kitchen area which, through the ribbon window, gives to the clients the opportunity to see the preparation of innovative dishes by the Italian chefs. The dining room maintains contact with the external environment thanks to the large window that closes the perimeter. The mezzanine area creates the possibility of having meals in a more secluded place but at the same time it does not create an isolated place thanks to the glazed balcony.

The appearance of Il Ferrarino restaurant is elegant and essential. The refined design, both inside and outside, is based on a palette of neutral colors such as beige, white, black, gold. The alternation with a palette in shades of green breaks the uniformity of the environment creating a more entertaining and less severe space. The dining rooms feature furnishings in dark colors contrasted with the bright colors of the wall coverings. The presence of patterned wallpapers and paintings hanging on the walls create a play of colors giving vitality to the restaurant space. The same approach has been used for the toilets where the foliage patterned wallpaper is opposed to the bright white marble enhancing this contrast meant to express the duality of the Italian and Moroccan soul of Il Ferrarino.
One of the key features of the project has been the usage of local materials and furniture coming from both Italy and Morocco. Indeed, thanks to the cooperation with Italian artisans located a few meters form the studio, we could manage to maximize the usage of sustainable materials. One example is the 80% of the furniture that has been made up of wood deriving from the recovery of the trees fallen for natural events such as the flood Vaia happened in Belluno in 2018.
The wallpaper has been printed on recycled paper and to enhance that we kept its yellowish tone rather than a bleach the paper itself to get a neutral white one.
The paintings that decorate the environment have been created by the local young artists under 30 yrs old from different ateliers scattered all over city.