Formafantasma take creative direction of 800-year-old Florence pharmacy

Formafantasma has been appointed creative director of the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, one of the oldest continuously operating pharmacies in the world.

The Florence institution, founded in 1221, named the Italian design duo — studio founders Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin — to a role that will focus primarily on its products. The studio will work to unravel the hidden histories of the Officina's product line and inform new launches, while also contributing across the company's packaging, communication, retail spaces and events.

"Our intention is not to redefine Santa Maria Novella through a new image, but to build from what already exists, understanding what has allowed it to remain relevant since 1221 and how this can inform its present and future," Formafantasma said.

"This means examining how its history is communicated, how new products are developed, and how the different expressions of the company can form a coherent whole."

The Officina's history spans eight centuries. Dominican friars founded it in 1221, growing medicinal herbs to prepare remedies, balms and ointments for the infirmary of Florence's Santa Maria inter Vineas church. Over time it became a public pharmacy, an official supplier to the Medici court and later a purveyor of cosmetics and fine fragrances. Today it functions largely as a perfumery.

For Formafantasma, the appeal lies in the accumulated knowledge embedded in the institution rather than its age alone. "The Officina is not simply defined by its longevity, but by the accumulation and transmission of knowledge across generations, embedded in ingredients, formulations, techniques, objects and spaces," the studio said.

"Working with such an accumulation raises questions close to our own practice, particularly how it is preserved and transformed, how materials carry their own histories, and how an institution can advance without treating its past as static."

Material legacies are familiar territory for the duo. Formafantasma built its reputation on research-heavy investigations into specific materials, charting the global impact of the forestry industry in its Cambio exhibition and unpacking wool production and humans' symbiotic relationship with sheep in the Oltre Terra exhibition.

For the Officina, the aim is to apply that same forensic approach to materials and sustainability to the company's own uninterrupted production heritage — eight centuries of continuous making — in order to inform its future.

"Their role will be that of curators, attentive to the knowledge the Officina has safeguarded for eight centuries, made of ingredients, formulas and craft, and to the ways in which it can continue to evolve," the company said.

The appointment extends a pattern of institutions bringing Formafantasma on board as advisors. In July, London's Serpentine Galleries named the duo its first-ever ecology advisor; the designers had previously staged their Cambio exhibition there.

The Santa Maria Novella appointment suggests that Formafantasma's research-driven practice is increasingly being deployed not only in galleries but inside historic commercial institutions, where questions of preservation, materials and continuity now shape brand strategy itself.