After a swift remodeling beginning in April of this year, innovative kitchen and bathroom designer Boffi has reopened their doors on M Street with brand new designs that seamlessly integrate their innovative blend of modern aesthetics with artisan tradition.
Upon walking into the newly designed store you are guided through the showrooms by the sleek, clean lines of the model, which direct you in and out of the spaces so naturally you might not realize you’re being persuaded. Along the way, your eyes stray from the smoothly beaten path, finding long expanses of custom countertops, shelving, wide-mouthed sinks (the daydreams of serious cooks), and luxurious modern bathtubs in haute blacks, whites, silvers, and browns.
Roberto Gavazzi, CEO of Boffi, delights in the idea of bringing Boffi’s signature style to Georgetown. Unlike other big cities, Washington – and specifically Georgetown – is filled with wonderfully antiquated, colonial homes; the perfect palette on which to bring out the dynamic designs Boffi creates. “It is what you see in the current trends,” says Gavazzi, “to mix things with very strong combinations of products coming from very different cultures, and from very different styles. Here, you see a raw wall of bricks close to a very clean and aggressive kitchen. In an old mansion here, it would really be a very nice contrast.”
However, the Boffi designs aren’t only for those with an eye for pushing the envelope of interior decoration. While the store offers kitchens that can be very aggressive and modern, there are also many ways to adjust their furniture to be warm and conservative.
“You can moderate the presentation in a way that is more acceptable to someone who wants something more reassuring,” says Gavazzi. “While when you are with somebody else who wants a more aggressive, ‘New York’ type of kitchen, you can go with a stainless steel solution, totally clean and simple. We have this possibility of really adapting our lines to the type of customer we are in front of.”
But at the end of the day, the store preserves the fact that their customers are buying an overall Boffi style. “We will never completely change the basic way of being that Boffi transmits,” says Gavazzi. Started in 1934 in Milan, Italy, the company has a long history being a high-end, trendsetting designer of comprehensive furniture packages, or modular system products, as they call them.
Buying a kitchen or bathroom from Boffi is not like purchasing other furniture. Buying a sofa, for instance, is quite simple. You keep it for a few years, and when you tire of it you get rid of it, get a new one. Buying an entire kitchen can be more complicated. You will most likely be stuck with the one you choose for the duration of your time in that house. So it’s important to get one that suits you.
That’s why Boffi works with the architects and designers to incorporate the kitchen into each individual space. The showrooms are there to expose the product in the best way, from warmer and more intimate, to modern, clean and aggressive.
“What we like to offer is a very international style for people who are from different places,” says Gavazzi. “We are quite an international company in general,” which nonetheless offers a universally Boffian way of looking at furniture and lifestyle.
At Boffi Georgetown’s grand opening on the evening of September 16th (though they had officially reopened back in August), Boffi’s premier art director Pierro Lissoni, who designed a huge percentage of the overall line, mingled with Georgetowners and delighted in the opportunity to bring his signature style to one of DC’s most cultured neighborhoods.
