Designed by the American film director Wes Anderson in 2015, Bar Luce recreates the atmosphere of a typical Milanese cafè.
he café is located at the entrance building of Fondazione Prada. The range of colors, the formica furniture, the seats, the floor, and the wood wall panels are reminiscent of Italian popular culture and aesthetics from the 1950s and 1960s, echoing artistic decisions Anderson made for his short film Castello Cavalcanti (2013). The arched ceiling and the patterned decoration for the top half of the bar’s walls, recreate a ‘miniature’ version of the vaulted glass roof and the decorations of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, one of Milan’s symbolic buildings. Other iconographic sources have been equally inspirational, notably two masterpieces of Italian Neorealism, both set in Milan: Miracolo a Milano, 1951 (Miracle in Milan) by Vittorio De Sica and Rocco e i suoi fratelli, 1960 (Rocco and His Brothers) by Luchino Visconti.
The Ellie Project 