FAQ
Cristofori Santi Architetti Associati was founded more than twenty years ago in Milan through the collaboration between Marialisa Santi and Giacomo Arduino Cristofori.
Over the years, we have evolved and grown, working primarily with companies in the retail and hospitality sectors, areas in which we have gained the most valuable and successful experience.
Our preferred point of contact is usually the company itself, a well-structured client with whom we enjoy engaging in a dialogue and to whom we can provide the tools of our profession, enabling us to convey the brand’s message, attitude and story. Depending on the client we are working with, we are able to do this in different ways.
Over these twenty years of activity, we have had the opportunity to accompany many companies on their journey, working not only in Italy and across Europe, but also in Asia, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
We have built a particularly fruitful relationship with China, especially in the retail sector. In fact, more than fifteen years ago, we supported several major companies — primarily Italian luxury brands — in their expansion into the Chinese market. These experiences have taught us a great deal. They have allowed us to experiment, work with different cultures and bring this expertise into everything we do today in Italy and across Europe.
Through our work across Europe, we have also built a strong network of professionals with whom we have developed long-standing partnerships. We have established similarly solid relationships in the US and the Middle East.
Over time, we have built a partnership with a Shanghai-based practice, with which we collaborated very actively until the lockdown period in 2020, and somewhat less so since then due to the changing geopolitical context.
We like to think of our work as a process of interpretation. We work closely with brands and seek, in the part that falls within our expertise, to convey their message as effectively as possible, through what we define as a humanistic approach.
We always think about the end user: the customer, the guest, the people who may work in these spaces, depending on the context.
We seek to create places where careful attention is paid to the design of the space and its details, as well as to the selection of materials and the use of light.
Together, all these elements shape spaces that, in our view, can make people feel good, encouraging them to stay and, ultimately, to return.