Forme d’Acqua Venice Fountains host of the inauguration event of Annex Beach, the restaurant and beach bar of the Boulevard de la Croisette, which restyling is signed by Jacques Garcia, world-famous Architect and interior designer.
During the event we had the pleasure to interview Sergio Fracchia, President of Annex Beach, which has spoke to us about the project and the importance of the made in Italy craft.
Annex Beach is a restaurant on one of the most beautiful beach of Europe, a stylish restaurant with a refined design. The fact to be an open-air location gave you a competitive advantage, offering the restaurant as a safe premises, under a perspective that one could dare to define “Covid free”?
Yes, of course! The fact that the beach is an open-air destination gave a huge help to us, the business operators, but this is not enough to make it works. So we created a concept: just because we are in one of the most beautiful beaches in Europe, or at least of the Mediterranean sea, we enlisted the help of one of a world-famous designer, called Jacques Garcia, which reproduced in this beach club a cave in the sea, with a distinctive and very suggestive style. The most important companies of different industries took part in the project realization, among them also several operators in the Italian national territory.
Therefore, the fact that the restaurant, the beach club and the beach are en plen air gave in general a significant aid, but principally that generated ad advantage to us, that we had created an unique premises, where people come in also just to visit it.
The Annex Beach design is unique and stands out the others beach club of the la Croisette: it was the effect that you expected to achieve with the Garcia’s project or it went beyond expectations?
I loved the maquette realized by the artist Garcia and immediately convinced me. Obviously the first thought was “WOW”, the second was “How can we achieve it?”, thirdly I said “Yes, It’s crazy, but we must do it! Because all the things with a touch of insanity also have different results.” The demonstration was that we opened on June 2nd, after the end of lock-down, we worked on all the rules to ensure social distancing and with all the related issues that you can imagine, but immediately we went fully booked, sold out.
As an Italian you wanted with you lot of Italian companies in your business project: was It a prejudicial choice or was it maturated with awareness?
No prejudice at all, It was a rational choice, to the point that we have also worked with local French companies. Therefore it wasn’t an “only Italy”, no way, but on certain “made in Italy” sectors – such as furnishings or finishing touches – we have to acknowledge that we are leader. Some things in France are well done, but on crafts we are invincible, fortunately for us. Here we have created a cave and Garcia thought to insert some fountains, some water games that could amplify the effect of an underwater cave. Forme d’Acqua Venice Fountains has succeeded in making these realizations and have proven to be at the forefront. Then today, with technology, lot of operations could be done with remote work: also to tranquilize the clients that want to make business thousands of miles away, where we are now, all thing can be manage trough technology and Internet, so if something went wrong, it can be remote fixed without any particular work.