Divide and conquer: Adotta

In any workplace, there can be a need to escape somewhere quiet for an important call or a moment of reflection, away from the distractions of colleagues and coffee breaks. For architects working on the design of these spaces, demountable partitions offer a practical and flexible solution that enables an interior to be easily divided into specific functional areas. The Italian firm, Adotta, is a specialist in the design, production and supply of office walls and partitions, with experience helping all sorts of businesses introduce sound-proof rooms to the workplace.

“We’ve worked on spaces for law firms, advertising agencies, financial companies, car dealers, dentists and many other businesses,” says Adotta CEO Luigi Zannier, who took control of the company in 2007. “The key is to work closely with the architects to provide solutions to the problems they are trying to solve.”

Adotta’s core product is Metafora, a system that was developed before Zannier joined the firm as a US sales representative in 2004, and which he came to realise had widespread appeal due to its refined design and intelligent engineering. When the opportunity arose to purchase the company, Zannier focused on promoting the benefits of Metafora and implementing the system in projects around the world. “The company was always driven by design,” Zannier recalls. “The reason for our success is that it’s a good product that’s well-designed, well-engineered, and backed up with excellent service.”

Metafora provides all the benefits of a demountable partition system in a clean-lined and precise form that makes it suitable for meeting rooms, private offices or anywhere requiring acoustic separation. The metal profiles holding the glass walls in place are just 25 millimetres high and the width of 100 millimetres is consistent along the floors, ceilings and vertical elements, infusing the system with a visual purity that makes it popular with architects and their clients. Different thicknesses of glass achieve varying levels of acoustic dampening, and a range of connectors allow walls, swing doors and service modules containing devices to be configured depending on the demands of the space.

Having worked exclusively with Metafora for almost a decade, in 2016 the company launched its first new product – a wall system featuring aluminium profiles clad in wood veneers that introduces the warmth of wood to workplace interiors. The Wallen range was developed in collaboration with the architecture office Gri e Zucchi Associates. Its functional and innovative qualities led it to become a top winner at this year’s Architizer A+Awards. Wallen’s doors, panels and wood-clad modules can be combined with fixed-glass panels to create a flexible system capable of many configurations.

Adotta’s research and development team has also devised a dynamic wall system called Armonica that can be used to temporarily divide interiors using moveable aluminium and glass partitions. These lightweight frameworks are available in a wide range of anodised aluminium finishes that can be combined with wood or matched with the Metafora system.

With 2017 marking ten years of Adotta under the current management, the company is able to look back on a productive period that has seen it achieve double-digit growth every year since 2010. The products are developed in Italy, where the company’s project management team works on providing optimal systems for clients around the world. Adotta also operates showrooms in Miami and New York to serve its US customers, who continue to account for around 50 percent of its business.

Having completed more than 700 projects around the world, ranging from a five-floor office for Nike in New York City, to a high-end spa in Milan, the company is now firmly established as a leader in the field of office wall solutions. It has also exhibited at trade fairs such as NeoCon in Chicago and Orgatec in Cologne, offering audiences around the world an opportunity to discover first hand how its products can improve the layout and functionality of a variety of workspaces.

Looking ahead, Adotta is set to launch a new showroom in Los Angeles, providing a location for West Coast clients to experience its products. It is also developing a simple mono-profile system offering an extremely broad range of finishing options that Zannier suggests will make it particularly “fun to sell”. With its product portfolio and global presence steadily expanding, Adotta is quietly making a mark on workplaces around the world.

© Architonic