London designer Tomás Alonso used ceramic tiles to create optical illusions in this store he designed for Spanish shoe brand Camper in London.
The interior is lined with a grid of white 10 by 10cm tiles, but this pattern is broken in places by coloured geometric tiles to create the illusion of recesses or volumes looming out from the walls.
The space is furnished with benches and counters made of oak and bent steel tubes in Alonso’s studio, plus ceramic lamps he designed specially for the project.
Called Camper Together, the shop is the brand’s fifth in London and is located in Covent Garden.
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The information that follows is from Camper:
CAMPER
TOMÁS ALONSO
LONDON
Camper opens a new shop in the city of London, on the corner of Shelton Street and Neal Street.
The store’s image was conceived by Tomás Alonso, a young Spanish designer of Galician origin now based in London, who practises “slow design” and has a knack for working with simple gestures.
With this new venue, the British capital now boasts a total of five Camper Together shops.
Since the great masters of the Modernist movement, no designer has been noted for his ability to bend a steel tube. This apparently simple feat is actually quite difficult to perform with a natural flair, as Tomás Alonso does.
Tubes, wood and colour were all he needed to craft the furnishings for this new Camper store. Another simple flourish in the tile pattern creates an illusory three-dimensional effect on the walls.
“All of the furniture was designed and built specifically for the shop as part of a personal project I’ve been working on for some time now, which is based on the formal and structural language that two materials as dissimilar as lacquer tubing and natural wood – in this case, white oak – can create together.
This language also extends to the stairs and the cash desk unit. The pieces were handcrafted at my studio in London. Perhaps the most striking element is the large table with its accompanying chairs and benches, which take up most of the space. The ceramic lamps are also original designs.
The wall cladding is a simple twist on the standard 10 x 10 cm square tile. If it is combined with three additional shapes, you can create all kinds of geometric patterns and designs in isometric perspective.” TOMÁS ALONSO
Tomás Alonso (Vigo, 1974) is the prototypical young nomadic designer who, like so many others, roams the earth searching for ideas to make his work more original. He is not in any hurry; he practises his own version of “slow design”, which consists in doing things leisurely and carefully so that no detail is overlooked.
He wandered through the USA, Italy and Australia before moving to London to study at the Royal College of Art. Alonso graduated in 2006 and teamed up with five classmates of different nationalities to found OKAYstudio.
He currently combines his research work with commercial design commissions. His personal creations have been exhibited at galleries such as NextLevel (where he presented the show Variations on a Tube in 2009), Whitechapel and Aram, whose doors are always open to up-and-coming talent.
Tomás is a rising star, and this is his first interior design project. The concept—which, like every Together shop, is a limited edition—made its first appearance in Genoa, and the London store will soon be followed by another in Glasgow.
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