Like other French luxury brands, Celine has moved the manufacture of its leather goods to the Italian countryside. Skilled craftsmanship still thrives amid the hillside towns and vast vineyards of Tuscany, for example. There—a cradle of couture companies both French and Italian—a number of new production facilities have been built in recent years, including the latest for Celine.

Fabio Barluzzi and Barbara Ponticelli, the husband-and-wife team behind Florence-based MetroOffice Architetti, have created a niche working within the fashion world. After completing an earlier project for Celine in the Chianti region of Tuscany, which included the renovation of two warehouses connected by a bridge, they were invited to compete for the design of a much larger commission, a new 47,000-square-foot building to house 250 artisans and office workers.