Wooden pegboard lines the walls within Ace & Tate's Amsterdam eyewear store

Amsterdam-based Occult Studio has designed the flagship store for eyewear brand Ace & Tate – installing wooden panels with peg holes that allow displays and mirrors to be easily moved around (+ slideshow).

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio

Occult Studio created a minimal interior for the shop and opticians on Van Woustraat, just south of the Dutch capital’s city centre.

Aiming to create a space that offers a “unique retail experience”, the designers took the brand’s ever-changing eyewear range as a starting point for the project.

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio

Ace & Tate is a very dynamic brand with constantly changing collections,” creative director Kim Keogh told Dezeen. “The concept for the store evolved around our intent to create a unique retail experience.”

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio

Wooden panels crafted from light oak run along the walls within the main retail area, and feature a grid of circular holes where custom-made shelving and mirrors slot into.

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio

“We used the dynamic elements of the brand as a starting point and translated them into a unique modular system,” explained Keogh. “The wall can be composed in continuously changing arrangements. Collections can be placed in groups and the mirrors can be placed at various heights to be at the customer’s eye level.”



A long wooden table that was designed and made by Keogh stands in the centre of the shop. It features a glass insert that displays more items in the collection.

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio

“The furniture pieces, wall systems, shelving and mirrors, are specifically designed and custom made to create a fine balance between form and functionality,” she said.

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio

The walls of a private examination room towards the back of the shop are completely covered in a grey wool fabric – intended to create a “tactile, relaxing and sound-absorbing atmosphere”.

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio

“By using carefully picked materials such as light oak wood, white steel, speckled stone and quality fabrics, we aimed to create a rich experience in a minimalist context – setting a stage for the product and the experience of the brand,” explained Keogh.

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio

Benches are placed by the front window and outside of the examination area, with magazines available for customers waiting for appointments.

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio

Canadian architecture studio Scott & Scott installed a similar peg system in a Vancouver restaurant – puncturing over 100 holes into the wall to store furniture, hold lighting and display art.

Pegboard also features in Aesop’s Hamptons store, a tiny Soho office by Studio Swine and a shop in Stockholm by Form Us With Love.

Ace & Tate flagship store by Occult Studio
Plan – click for larger image

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Primus Arkitekter transforms Fritz Hansen factory into a library and cultural centre

A sawtooth roof with integrated skylights and solar panels gives this library and cultural centre in Denmark an industrial aesthetic that references its location at an old furniture factory (+ slideshow).

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter
Photograph by Stamers Kontor

Designed by Copenhagen studio Primus Arkitekter, the new facility in Allerød occupies a 1930s building that previously housed the offices of a factory operated by the Fritz Hansen furniture brand – the manufacturer of products including Jaime Hayón’s Ro armchair and Arne Jacobsen’s Grand Prix chair.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter

The architects refurbished and extended the building to make it suitable for its new use as a cultural centre and library, as part of a larger masterplan for the centre of Allerød that includes new urban spaces and the expansion of a local repertory theatre.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter
Photograph by Stamers Kontor

The extension is divided along its length into two spaces, with the new children’s library occupying the side that adjoins the brick building housing the main library.



The other half of the new addition functions as a cultural centre containing a multipurpose community hall, and a theatre and events space that can be subdivided using folding wooden partitions.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter

Both spaces feature high, sloping ceilings with integrated skylights that illuminate the interiors and help improve acoustics within the large rooms. The ridges in the roof’s profile also provide an appropriate point for the partition in the cultural centre.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter

“The extension houses the children’s library and we wanted to give them a sense of spatial generosity and abundance of natural light that could support these and future functions in a flexible building,” architect David Bülow-Jacobsen told Dezeen.

“Thus we chose to make the floor plan very open and rational, while the roof section subdivides the space with varying ceiling heights,” he said.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter

Externally, the building’s shed-like form and material treatment recall the site’s industrial heritage. The entire exterior is clad in lapped black wooden panels that add texture to the surfaces.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter

“The panels were chosen to add scale and materiality to the building and were also used to clad an existing elevator tower added in the 1980s to create a coherent volume,” Bülow-Jacobsen said.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter

Solar panels positioned on the steeper sections of the roof blend in with the black surfaces, while lighting integrated into the underside of the slanted panels creates a tessellated pattern of light and shadow on the elevation facing a public square.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter

Two upper storeys within the existing building were refurbished as part of the project to accommodate a community centre and offices for the library. Large openings in the walls allow spaces on the ground floor to open out to the public square.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter

Bülow-Jacobsen and partner Per Appel established Primus Arkitekter in 2008. Other projects by the studio include a small oak-clad house in Zealand, Denmark.

Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter
Site plan – click for larger image
Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter
Floor plan – click for larger image
Culture House and Library, Allerød by Primus Arkitekter
Section – click for larger image

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