Published on Febbraio 19th, 2014 | by Raffaella Capritti
0FONTANOT
Made in ItalyFONTANOT UK
Fitzwilliam Road, S65 1SL - Rotherham - South Yorkshire
Phone 0800 61 21 045
Production: Spiral and open staircases
Spiral and open staircases
Fontanot‘s history began in 1947 in the carpentry shop of the Albini brothers. In this workshop in the centre of Rimini, the Albini craftsmen worked wood and made stepladders with passion and an inimitable personal style. The quality of their products led them to be one of the most prized ladder factories in the entire region.
In order to adapt to a market oriented towards mass production, they felt the need to industrialize staircase production, yet keeping the style of the products unaltered. The turning point came when Enzo Fontanot, the current president, joined the company giving life to Albini & Fontanot, the first company to set the objective of transforming a craftsman’s way of making spiral and open staircases into an industrial process. Theimportance of the design and the beauty of the shapes instantly became the company’s strength and it would over the years come to stand out for the elegance and furnishing potential of its products.
In the ’80s the Albini & Fontanot brand became famous all over the world for having realised an industrial process for the construction of spiral and open staircases. Research and development of innovative solutions that can change the way of looking at staircases lies at the heart of all the company’s activities. In 1982 Albini & Fontanot launched the Xnodo model, the first spiral staircase featuring the revolutionary horizontal and vertical structure adjustment system. Constructed of steel and polyurethane, a material never before used in the sector, marked a historical turning point in staircase manufacture thanks to the adjustment mechanism invented by Albini & Fontanot.
Xnodo was only the first in a series of innovative projects the company undertook to make its staircases ever more adaptable to the customers’ needs. Once the concept of a staircase as a single and inseparable piece became outdated, the company began making easy-to-assemble kit staircases, designed for those that want to personalise their home in total freedom, giving life to the brands Arkè, Pixima and Magia.
The extensive research activity carried out by Albini & Fontanot led to the realisation of various models to satisfy the needs of designers, architects and customers alike, offering personalizable staircases with a sophisticated design. An example of Albini & Fontanot’s excellence are the staircases of the Genius collection, designed to be adapted to any architectural requirement so that the staircase goes beyond its functional purpose of connection element between floors to also make room for the aesthetic beauty of the product. Another show-piece of the company is Techne, the first plastic staircase in history made of polymers reinforced with fibre glassand fully recyclable: industrial genius and sophisticated technology inaugurate a new interior design language. The Techne spiral staircase has been selected by the Compasso d’Oro 2011 examining commission.
After forty years of activity, the company reinvented itself and set new challenges, beginning a new adventure by changing the Albini & Fontanot brand name to Fontanot. On the one hand, it showed strong continuity with the past, on the other hand, the strength, the energy and the new ideas that drove it to create products designed for modern needs.
Forty years after the innovative process that opened the road to a new way of constructing spiral and open staircases industrially, the company patented the Fontanot 2:Easy tread system, that revolutionised the spiral staircase idea.The Fontanot 2:Easy tread system (for the first time fitted on the Time staircase) provides more walking spacemaking the spiral staircasemore comfortable and safer than any other indoor spiral staircase. Thanks to the innovative ergonomic shape of the alternate treads, theFontanot 2:Easy system allows making the internal goingas wide as the external goingso that it is comfortable to walk up and safe to walk down the spiral staircase. The patented Fontanot system allows designing and devising spiral staircases in a new and innovative way, transforming them into more comfortable and safer stairs suitable for persons of any age.
Fill out the form to request information from FONTANOT UK
Products by FONTANOT
