Hasta La Ideas

A landscape of stepped boxes covered in sisal displays products at this Barcelona boutique by local firm Arquitectura-G.

Arquitectura-G was commissioned by AOO, a shop that sells furniture and products from its own label and selected other brands, to transform a former warehouse into the retail space and office.

The stepped display begins next to the entrance and continues along one wall, rising in height and expanding outwards as it reaches the rear of the shop.

“The architects wanted to exhibit the objects as they deserve, in a unique way,” AOO cofounder Marc Morro told Dezeen. “They wanted the pieces to have a special presence from the street and once you are inside. The solution was a step that grows from the entrance to the end, and shows the objects as a cascade.”

The entire display unit is covered in sisal, a woven surface made from stiff plant fibres that gives it a robust and textural dimension, and provides a uniform backdrop for the products.

“Together with the architects we had a clear idea that the materials had to define clearly the aim of the shop, so we wanted a kind of a Mediterranean component,” said Morro. “For that there are a mix between white walls, warm lights and the toasted colour from the sisal.”

At the back of the space, the sisal continues across the floor of a studio space and up into a raised kitchen and lounge area, where it covers the base of the boxy sofas.

The narrowing floor space resulting from the projecting steps creates a gradual transition between the public space of the shop and this private area.

The back rooms can be completely closed off by sliding across a partition with a stepped profile that slots behind the display when not in use.

Mirror panels fixed to the side of the partition reflect the products and give the space the impression of added depth when it is slid across.

Simple lamp shades are suspended at different heights above the product display, with their black cords left exposed to contrast with the white walls.

Photography is by José Hevia unless otherwise stated.

The post AOO shop in Barcelona by Arquitectura-G
has a stepped sisal display platform appeared first on Dezeen.

Here’s another apartment renovation in Barcelona by Spanish studio Arquitectura-G (see their El Born apartment in our earlier story).

All rooms are linked by folding doors and sliding wall partitions.

The kitchen and bathroom occupy the former service corridor.

See also: Apartment in El Born by Arquitectura-G

More apartments on Dezeen »

Photographs are by José Hevia.

Here’s some text from the architects:

The original condition of the apartment had a linked room layout, with pieces connected to each other by double leaf doors. These pieces were also related to a service corridor which split the circulation into two, connecting more efficiently the kitchen, the utility room, the larder and the guest bathroom.

The generous passage between pieces let link them programmatically, allowing multiply the dimension of a single room or even reaching an absolute permeability. On the other hand, diverse levels of division and intimacy where possible locking the doors depending on the needs.

Due to the flexibility of that scheme, we chose to maintain and to improve it.

It also fitted with the uncertain needs of the clients. The main decision has been creating a central core of specialized pieces -kitchen and bathrooms- which takes over the original circulation spaces.

We placed the kitchen at the entrance, instead of the original useless hall.

Thus, we have an encounter point accessible both from the exterior and the contiguous rooms that, furthermore, is a kitchen.

On the other side, the new bathroom appropriates the original service corridor, increasing its size so we can understand it as a huge interchangeable toilette area where we have two complete bathrooms -which may go with two hypothetical rooms-, and a guest bathroom.

We insisted on removing the corridor by rotating an existing partition and covering it with a floor to ceiling mirror.

It provided the coming up of programmatically ambiguous areas, ready to be defined by the inhabitant, and it improved the visual permeability allowing diagonals that break the orthogonality of the plan.

At the same time, the rotation of this mirror plane blurs the bathroom’s inner division while reflecting its images to the adjoining rooms.

Beyond the size equality of the pieces, the door is the tool which expresses the apartment’s versatility.

There is not any single leaf door. The existing double leaf ones are maintained, combined or relocated while some new typologies are included; sliding one leaf doors, sliding/casement doors, etc.

It is done in an almost random way, playing with the size of the partition and the door in order to mistake one element for the other, and to emphasize that each room has a close relation to its adjoining ones.

See also:

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