OK

Our principal idea behind this design was to create a museum-like white box containing a multitude of architectural elements to play with the visitor’s imagination. Stairs lead to nowhere, arches become entrances to shelves. The space is about fantasy. Not the traditional retail fantasy of transformative commodities, rather a totally unexpected and unknown relationship opens up between the visitor and the pieces within. The basic shapes of stairs, curves, arches, and nooks, once contained in the white box, transform into a museum collection, a collection of memories that each visitor will pair with their own to create a singular experience. The deliberately unsymmetrical layout encourages exploration, a sense of the unknown; a riposte to the uninspiring uniformity of replicated stores. A gridded ceiling above unifies the fragments into a total environment. Its’ glowing light casts a synthetic atmosphere to the store, emphasising the sense of it being a space apart from others. As with the contrasting fragments of architecture, differing aesthetics combine to enlivening effect. The rigidity of the grid and its resolutely modern connection to Italian radical design & Superstudio contrasts to the amorphous plaster organic niches, which in turn contrast to the regal Pierre Paulin like character of the seating nook, a calming moment of sumptuous luxury. And then another unexpected twist - a terracotta glazed screen facade referencing Asian Modernist architecture, anchoring this otherworldly space with a grounding connection to the local environment. Photography by Michele Yong.