In Bassano del Grappa, a 1940s building of little architectural or historical value has made way for a new four-story office building with an underground parking level, commissioned by Bice Progetti at a crossroads just outside the town’s historic center. Engineer Alessandro Fogliato led the architectural design together with Bressan & Miorin Architetti, while interior architect Luca Sabadin took his cue from the new facade itself, a glass skin interrupted by vertical aluminum louvers. Rather than treat the interior as a separate design problem, Sabadin carried that rhythm inside, using it as the starting point for the building’s entrance and stairwells.
Grappa office building Technical information
- Architectural project Alessandro Fogliato with Bressan & Miorin Architetti
- Location Bassano del Grappa, Italy
- Project year 2026
- Client Bice Progetti
- Interior design Luca Sabadin
- Photography URSUS
Rather than treat the interior as a separate design problem, Sabadin carried that rhythm inside, using it as the starting point for the building’s entrance and stairwells.
From aluminum louvers to a lit stone wall
The brief asked for continuity between what happens outside and what greets visitors at the door. Sabadin translated the louvres’ vertical cadence into a single architectural gesture rather than a decorative echo, and the client’s own long-standing preference for natural stone and marble narrowed the search early on. That preference eventually led to Lithos Design’s Backlit walls, a system of marble panels machined thin enough to let light pass through the stone itself, so the material can play indoors the same role the metal fins play on the facade, filtering light while structuring the view. A showroom visit with the client settled the choice further: among the available patterns, Stripes was the one whose rhythm most closely matched the cladding outside, and it became the first material decision made for the interior.
Stripes in Caramello marble at the entrance
Stripes is built with a sgraffito technique, vertical grooves of equal width and depth but different levels of relief, cut into the stone so that light reverses the usual reading of the surface once switched on. For Edificio Direzionale, the panel was specified in the Caramello variant, which pairs Giallo Siena with Estremoz marble. Positioned at the entrance, where it is visible from the street through the glass facade, the backlit wall then continues, uninterrupted, along the stairwell of all four floors. The cladding is broken into bands, separated by wood panelling inset with striated metal trim, so the marble and the joinery read as one continuous decorative language rather than two competing finishes.
Stripes is built with a sgraffito technique, vertical grooves of equal width and depth but different levels of relief, cut into the stone so that light reverses the usual reading of the surface once switched on.
Neutral surfaces, warm marble accents
Everywhere else, the palette stays deliberately quiet. Floors and main walls are finished in neutral tones, so the illuminated stone and the fittings around it can carry the visual weight. A Giallo Siena marble planter at the entrance, also produced by Lithos Design, repeats one of Stripes’ two marbles, and the veining of the porcelain stoneware floor echoes both Giallo Siena and Estremoz without competing with them. The one departure from this restraint is the wall of the open string staircase, left in a warm brown tone beneath a circular pendant fixture by Panzeri that drops through the full height of the stairwell, tying the lighting design to the same vertical logic as the backlit marble below it.
Between the louvred facade and the lit stone wall inside, Edificio Direzionale reads as a single idea carried through in two different materials, rather than two decisions bolted together after the fact.
For Sabadin, the wall resolved a tension between two instincts that don’t always sit together, as he explains:
“The Stripes Caramello backlit wall was a strong meeting point between the intrinsic classicism of marble and a contemporary sensibility. It’s a product that stands out and feels strongly material, yet speaks a clean, contemporary language that suits my more minimal taste.”
Luca Sabadin
Between the louvered facade and the lit stone wall inside, Edificio Direzionale reads as a single idea carried through in two different materials, rather than two decisions bolted together after the fact. The building’s public route, from the street to the upper floors, is defined by one continuous surface that changes register but never changes logic.
