Hasta La Ideas

Mirrored walls conceal a photography studio at the centre of this clothes store in Malmö, Sweden, by architects Arrhov Frick.

The mirror-clad studio is mobile and can be slid into different positions around the Très Bien shop floor.

Garments and shoes are displayed on stainless steel tables and racks, which can also be reconfigured.

New clothing lines are photographed in the hidden studio then uploaded to the retailer’s online shop.

Housed inside a former textile factory, the shop has weathered timber floorboards that contrast with a new concrete floor in the entrance lobby.

Similar clothes stores recently published on Dezeen include a London boutique with rails made of scaffolding and a Japanese shop split in half by a zig-zagging wall – see all our stories about retail interiors here.

Photography is by Åke E:son Lindman.

The following information is provided by the architects:

Très Bien shop – Headquarters
Architecture/ Concept

Très Bien Shop’s collections are displayed in a building with great character and space in central Malmö, Sweden.

The space has previously housed a textile factory as well as a flea market, which becomes apparent when checking out the well-worn wooden floor.
When we started the project, the space was divided into a number of different-sized rooms with skewed logistics and hierarchy. The new architectural concept gives the room functional logistics and clear, built-in flexibility.

Très Bien Shop is a growing company, and it was impossible to determine exactly how the space would be used one or two years from now. Therefore, we designed a very flexible layout.

Currently, the majority of Très Bien Shop’s sales are made online and there’s a need for regular photo shoots to keep the web shop updated. Therefore, a new photo studio plays a central role in the design and is the only room dividing the overall space.

The photo studio is mobile and can be slid to different positions and adjust the space between warehouse and store. The exterior of the studio is paneled with mirrors, making it subtly disappear, and making it useful from all angles. The designed furniture features—racks, tables and shelves—are made in stainless steel and are designed as loose, moveable furniture.
  The entrance to the shop has a solid, glossy concrete floor. The weathered wooden floor of the store/warehouse section has been left intact and act as a contrast to the mirrors, concrete and stainless steel.

The idea is that the environment should serve as a somewhat anonymous and subtle complement to clothing collections of diverse character.

Location: Friisgatan 6 Malmö, Sweden
Year: 2010-2011
Status: Built
Program: Retail store/ photo studio/ storage/ office space
Area: 400 Sqm
Team: Johan Arrhov, Henrik Frick

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NE by Teruhiro Yanagihara	No Picnic by Elding Oscarson	Tree Hotel by Tham & Videgård Arkitekter

Portuguese architect and set designer João Mendes Ribeiro has converted the former house of a poet into a writer’s retreat (photos: Do Mal o Menos).

Located in Coimbra, Casa da Escrita was formally named Casa do Arco and housed the late Portuguese poet João Cochofel (1919-1982).

The converted house now provides an archive, writing quarters and temporary accommodation for practicing writers.

The decorative ceilings and corniced walls of the historic house are painted white, while the rooms are filled with polished wooden furniture.

The legs of a newly inserted timber staircase enclose a shelved storage area below, whilst bookshelves are housed within rotating walls nearby.

The open archive is located in the attic, where lines of desks provide workstations for researchers.

Similar renovation projects from the Dezeen archive include a house with floating wooden treads, another with unfinished timber furniture and an apartment with folding doors and sliding walls.

More information is provided by the architects:

Recently awarded the Diogo Castilho 2011 Architectural Prize, the Casa da Escrita ñ former Casa do Arco and residence of the poet João Cochofel is located in the old upper part of Coimbra and is inserted in a dense urban set of predominantly residential narrow winding streets.

The program asked for the contemporary reuse of the building, adaptating it to new functions, reconciling patrimonial and symbolic values with the present demands for comfort and flexibility embodied in the “emptying” and simplification of the living spaces.

Moreover, all the furnish of Casa da Escrita was carefully selected in order to provide the adequacy of the new spaces to a new functional program and to a wide audience, without setting aside the reference to the original space and the houseís atmosphere of comfort and intimacy.

The house is now an open archive, writing workshop and temporary residence for writers supporting a broad set of different activities and interactions between literary writing and other artistic creations.

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Groninger Museum renovation by Baas and Hayón	Shophouse Transformation by all(zone)	Alemanys 5 by Anna Noguera

Naked mannequins sit on the walls and ceiling of this MC Escher-inspired clothes store in Shanghai.

Designed by Rome and Shanghai architects 3Gatti Architecture Studio, the store is filled with clashing concrete staircases that display clothes and accessories.

Fitting rooms and a stockroom are enclosed beneath the ascending stairs at the rear of the store.

Smaller staircases at the front of the store cantilever out across the floor.

Lengths of copper pipe provide banisters, as well as rails for hanging clothing.

Other Shanghai projects recently featured on Dezeen include three aquatics stadiums and an office with a labia-like staircase – see all our stories about projects in Shanghai here.

Photography is by Shen Qiang.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

Alter
Concept store in Shanghai

Alter is a project for an alternative fashion store.

Sonja Long, the owner, had a vision out of the main stream, a vision about inverted values, alternative beauties and subverted point of views.

Despite the appearance actually Shanghai is a very conservative city, people seems not ready yet to accept many different ideas especially if against the main safe business values that dominate this town.

Sonja is Shanghainese but she was crazy and brave enough to propose to her customers a new model of high-end fashion store with top quality products but completely alternative at the main global brands accepted by the modern rich Chinese shoppers.

Francesco Gatti, the architect, is Roman and he was crazy and brave enough to realize into a space those ALTERnative feelings he share with Sonja.

The design was fast and spontaneous, as usual Francesco designed like a child, without inhibitions.

The space was small but needed a lot of functions and rooms, so was a natural gesture to develop a stair surface to cover the office and fitting rooms and at the same time exhibit the products in a multidimensional way.

The philosophy of Alter, as the word say is to be and inspire an alternative world.

So as a designer Francesco imagined an alternative architectural space like the ones in the drawings of Escher, where gravity and the rules of the normal world doesn’t exist anymore, where there is no “up” or “down”, no “left” or “right”, and where everything is possible.

Following this idea in the Alter store the stair become an independent element capable to wrap the space or to fold like a peace of paper creating impossible environments… or maybe possible, in the Alter dream.

Yes a dream; few months after the shop opening Francesco went to the cinema and discovered “Inception”, a movie about dreams where all the concept, from the stairs to the mirrors is strangely the same of ALTER… maybe he will be a good movie director.

Alter credits:

Architecture firm: 3GATTI
Chief architect: Francesco Gatti
Project manager: Brendan Whitsitt
Collaborators: Kylin Cheung , Bonnie Zhou , Karina Samitha, Danny Leung, Priyanka Gandhi, Zenan nLi , Andrew Chow
Programme: Fashion store exhibition area (for dresses, shoes, jewelery, glasses, design toys, books), lounge area, DJ console, two fitting rooms, office room
Contractor: Suenpui Laam
Client: Sonja Long
Location: Xin Tian Di, Madang Road, Xintiandi Style Mall, Shanghai
Total area: 100 m²
Design period: Spring 2010
Construction period: Summer 2010
Shop opening: September 2010
Materials: Steel structure, concrete bricks, white terrazzo cement, wax, plasterboard, gray cement, epoxy, plywood, leather
Photographer: Shen Qiang

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DURAS Daiba by Chikara Ohno	Algebraic Variations by Francesco Moncada	Unknown Union by Rafael de Cárdenas

Amsterdam studio Sander Architecten designed cardboard meeting rooms inside a bank in the Netherlands.

Giant cylinders of cardboard and paper enclose meeting rooms inside the headquarters for financial services advisor Rabobank.

The multi-ply cardboard is layered to create textured patterns on the surface of one cylinder.

Translucent Japanese paper covers a second cylinder, as well as the springy lanterns that surround circular skylights.

Timber screens and furniture fill the surrounding open-plan areas.

This is the second project this month to feature paper or card, following a cardboard labyrinth at the Serpentine Gallery – see all our stories about cardboard here and all our stories about paper here.

See also a bank with faces in the walls and another resembling the Amazonian forest – click here to see all our stories about banks.

Photography is by Alexander van Berge.

Here’s more information provided by Sander Architecten:

Sander Architecten stretches the boundaries of the modern office.

Amsterdam firm Sander Architecten completed the Square of Rabobank Nederland headquarters. Rabobank selected Sander Architecten out of a group of twenty to create and supervise the execution of the entire interior design (56.000 m²), including the twenty-five-storey building.

As the office interior is being redefined by the introduction of new methods of working, interior architecture is facing new challenges. In today’s work environment, the emphasis is on cooperation in teams and group dynamics; people go to the office for the social aspect more than anything else.  To realize this ambition, we view the building as a modern city. After all, the city is where individual freedom and spontaneous interaction are all-important.

The effectiveness of this concept is visible on the Square, located at the plinth of the new office building. Employees and visitors work, eat, read, and meet one another in a diverse landscape.

The ‘buildings,’ separate spaces with different functions, join up with the uncluttered grid of skylights and slim columns. The new style of working is based on freedom, trust and taking responsibility. In the client’s view, its employees are all entrepreneurs, responsible for their own performance in an environment free of fixed rules, fixed times and fixed locations.  The work spaces are tailored to specific activities: multi-person meetings, face-to-face meetings or a place to write a report with maximum concentration. Each activity has its own space.

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In nature routes are formed naturally; people intuitively find their way. Architect Ellen Sander was seeking that naturalness, that ‘flow’. The busiest routes automatically formed around the cores with the lifts and staircases, beyond which more peaceful zones naturally emerged. Moreover, the psychological concept of ‘flow’, the moment when need, desire and ability come together, connects the employee’s sense of happiness with an optimum result for the employer. The guiding principle for the interior design therefore became ‘form follows flow’. To enable flows vertical partitions were avoided so that the horizon would always be visible. ‘The office is my world and the world is my office.’

The design was generated by cooperation with a number of other designers. The Square on the plinth could not turn into a monotone, homogenous space. Diversity is required in order to stimulate people, and despite the enormous scale of the building, people are not left wandering around lost in sterile areas.

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The meeting pavilions designed by Sander Architecten are made from washi paper and paperboard. In combination with the Chinese lantern from washi paper suspended from the skylight, a distinctively tactile experience is created. The paperboard pavilion, which features attractive patterns created by the different uses of the material, is particularly inviting to touch.

Sharing art with the city

The wall annex glass display case is the centrepiece of the Square, and features On the departure and the arrival, a work by Chinese artist Ni Haifeng. The vertical museum contains porcelain objects including scissors, a bottle of Glassex and an iron, each painted in delftware style. The work is featured in the interior, too, with stills and a film about ‘the making of’ on view in the area behind the case.

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Client: Rabobank Nederland
Interior Architect and supervisor: Sander Architecten (Amsterdam)
Gross floor area: 56.000 m2
Completion: December 2011

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Nothing office by Joost van Bleiswijk	Cardboard office by Paul Coudamy	Magma Art Bookshop by Blustin Heath Design

Panels woven from steel wire filter light into this combined cafe and gallery by Spanish architects MSB Estudi Taller.

Located in Olot, north-east Spain, the 6T7 Espai Cafe has bare concrete walls and flooring.

Thick steel plates were used to make seating booths, bars and counter tops.

The wire window panels were woven by hand at the architects’ studio, creating an uneven texture in contrast to the severe furniture and interior.

Photographs are by Miquel Merce Arquitecte.

Here’s some more information from MSB Estudi Taller:

6T7 ESPAI CAFÈ
Old Town, Olot.

6T7 ESPAI CAFÈ is not just a regular cafeteria. It’s a meeting place for gatherings and exhibitions.

It is located in an alley in the old town, with stony and gray tones.

We wanted a neutral space to respond to the location, integrated in the context of the neighbourhood. This space had to be empty, clean and sober. Its walls are a place for exhibitions, for contemplation.

The space was small. We optimised grouping all elements of the bar, integrated to leave the view clean. The entire container is finished with concrete with the same appearance and roughness of the environment, the street: stony and gray.

The furniture could not reveal the function, could not charge the space, it had to be neutral. We created a piece of furniture to be seen, like a sculpture. A sculpture crafted from steel plate generating pace and enhances the shape of space. The sculpture wants to be austere, “essentially constructive,” and wants to pervade space: “sculpted space.”

The finish is warm and gentle; steel was chosen with a dark brown tone and dark streaks that gives a natural texture to the piece.

The space was incomplete, lacking a warmer atmosphere, with more vibration, more humanised.

In one of the facades facing the street, there is an element, which filters, blurs, divides the light. A vibration element that provides texture, roughness to space, in contrast to the smooth surface of the walls and furniture. One element made by us, by hand in the workshop, composed by frames twisted with steel wire, and hang along the entire wall, making a totally random composition, flexible and filtered. A handmade piece to humanise the space, intentionally made to get close and merge architecture to the people.

Neutral space + sculpture + atmosphere generator = 6T7 ESPAI CAFÈ
Miquel Subiràs, MSB ESTUDI TALLER, 2011.

CREDITS Architectural project: Miquel Subiràs – MSB Estudi taller d’arquitectura i disseny
web: www.msbestuditaller.com
Client: Raquel Martín
Surface: 160m2
Location: Carrer dels Sastres, no35 Olot, Girona, SPAIN
Constructor: Construccions Pallàs
Blacksmith and furniture: Metàl·liques Olot
Painting: Brillauto
Equipment: Terundar
Photography: Miquel Merce Arquitecte

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Coso Cafè in Palermo	Conduit restaurant by Stanley Saitowitz	M.N.ROY by Picault and Godefroy