Hasta La Ideas

Japanese fashion brand Comme des Garçons has opened a branch of its London store Dover Street Market in New York City (+ slideshow).

The new Dover Street Market store on Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue opened just before Christmas, and displays garments and accessories by both established and emerging fashion designers among a variety of installations.

“I want to create a kind of market where various creators from various fields gather together and encounter each other in an ongoing atmosphere of beautiful chaos – the mixing up and coming together of different kindred souls who all share a strong personal vision,” said Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo about the concept for the stores.

A selection of artists and designers created graphics and 3D pieces for the interior to form different environments across the seven storeys.

On the ground floor Kawakubo arranged wooden sticks haphazardly across part of the ceiling above scaffolding poles, which are used to support the rails displaying Comme des Garçons’ own designs.

White beams are clamped together to create angled shelves for Dover Street Market merchandise.

More scaffolding is used to form the section for Japanese designer Junya Watanabe on the floor above, where a kiosk for Moscot sunglasses is also located.

A globular tunnel painted purple on the inside covers the staircase connecting levels three and four.

Wooden structures and lattices are dispersed across the fifth level, some large enough to walk through.

The top two floors are decorated with a mix of patchwork wall hangings, illuminated lettering, translucent display units and metal columns.

American designer Thom Browne‘s apparel is presented in a glass room modelled like an office.

As well as New York and London, Dover Street Market also has an outpost in Ginza, Tokyo, which opened in 2006.

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opens in New York appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese studio Nendo has created a succession of boutiques for New York fashion brand Theory where garments hang from geometric black frames and circulation routes are modelled on road layouts (+ slideshow).

Nendo has so far created a total of nine stores for Theory, including two in California, two in Paris, and others in London, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and Osaka, all based on the same design concept.

Each one has a largely monochrome interior with a layout shaped around the movement of customers through the store, which the designers compare to the flow of traffic on a road system.

“Our idea was to adhere to the brand’s existing combination of simplicity and functionality with New York loft-style materials and a general sense of ease, while adding and emphasising a new concept: the flow of people,” they explained.

Product display tables and partitions have been arranged to clearly divide up the spaces, creating a network of junctions.

Changing rooms occupy generously sized spaces at the rear to encourage shoppers to spend more time trying on items.

“We allotted more space than usual for the dressing rooms and created a buffer zone between the dressing rooms and the shop proper, so that shoppers can take their time trying on clothes and selecting items without thinking about the main flow of people,” said the designers.

The first of the two new California stores is located in Beverly Hills and features a large shop window filled with a grid of mannequins, as well as clean white walls with recessed shelving.

A Los Angeles store occupies a converted warehouse on Melrose Avenue. Brick walls are left exposed and painted white, while steel trusses are visible overhead.

Photography is by Daici Ano.

Here’s a project description from Nendo:

Theory Stores

Shop interiors for theory, the New York-based fashion brand known for basics that fuse functionality with casual trends.

We designed the interiors for two shops in Paris and Los Angeles and one shop each in London, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and Osaka.

Our idea was to adhere to the brand’s existing combination of simplicity and functionality with New York loft-style materials and a general sense of ease, while adding and emphasising a new concept: the flow of people. By coming up with a circulation plan as an urban planner might locate new roads within a city, we made careful provisions for people to flow into the shop naturally and move smoothly around it. For the London shop, we created a ‘boulevard’ that follows on directly from the crosswalk outside the shop.

The Paris shop is located on a corner, so we installed entrances on both outward-facing walls and arranged a softly curving ‘short cut’ between them. We then added ‘plaza’ and ‘park’-like product display stages and lounge corners like to fit with the ‘road system’ in each shop and modulate each space. For the London shop, this meant installing 8.2 m long tables orientated to match the traffic flows within the shop; for the Paris shops, we added a large river delta-like stage that can display more than ten mannequins.

We allotted more space than usual for the dressing rooms and created a buffer zone between the dressing rooms and the shop proper, so that shoppers can take their time trying on clothes and selecting items without thinking about the main flow of people.

Together, these touches allowed us to respond to the different demands placed on the shop space while creating new flows of people that may, we hope, flow out into and colour the city space around the shops, too.

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are modelled on road systems appeared first on Dezeen.

Architecture firm OMA has designed a temporary auditorium for the basement of London department store Selfridges (+ slideshow).

Called the Imaginarium, the space will be used to host talks, debates and lectures during the Festival of Imagination, which opens in the store on 16 January.

The installation will feature a circular “amphitheatre” contained within a polycarbonate wall. Other walls in the space will be clad in mirrors while the floor will be painted in an Op Art-style pattern of black and white stripes, which will be applied using a road-painting machine.

“We asked Rem [Koolhaas of OMA] to do it and he said yes,” said Carlotta Jacoby, senior visual project manager at Selfridges. “It’s quite a simple design but with the mirrored walls it’s going to be pretty bonkers”.

The stepped amphitheatre will seat up to 72 people. OMA has also designed the furniture for the space and a folding screen that will be used during talks. Columns will be painted with green-screen paint.

The Imaginarium will host daily events during the Festival of Imagination – a store-wide festival that will “explore the nature, power and positive impact of imagination”. It will occupy the Ultralounge in the basement of the store, which is located on Oxford Street in central London.

The festival also features the Imagine Shop, a pop-up store curated by Dezeen that will showcase future-facing products and will contain an augmented reality watch store and an augmented reality model of a yacht designed by Zaha Hadid.

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features mirrored walls and an Op Art floor appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch supermarket Spar’s flagship store in Budapest features a series of undulating wooden forms through its interior by local firm LAB5 architects (+ slideshow).

The curvaceous forms of the interior are designed to guide shoppers to the back of the store. “There is a short route for quick daily shopping and a long route for weekend buyers,” Andras Dobos of LAB5 architects told Dezeen. “All the forms in the interior are inspired by this flow of customers.”

Shelving is created in between curved wooden ribs that extend from the walls and across the ceiling.

The wooden sections merge into an island for displaying bottles of wine. “[The wood] helps to create a more cosy atmosphere in spite of many industrial elements,” said Dobos.

Curved counters are clad vertically with similar wooden lengths in the bakery. Walls are painted brown, in keeping with the natural feel of the materials.

In other parts of the store, white beams zigzag between ribbed sections on the ceiling where wooden lengths are spread more sparsely.

A mix of pendant lamps, spotlights and tube lights are attached between the ribs on the ceiling.

A pair of curved white beams guide the shopper through the aisles, while fruit and vegetables are displayed within rounded counters made from Corian – a solid surface material that creates a smooth finish.

Rounded grey and white tills are positioned at the front of the store, which is located in Budapest’s MOM Park shopping centre.

Photography is by Zsolt Batár.

Here is some more information from the architects:

MOM Park is a shopping mall located in a wealthy district of Budapest. When SPAR decided to open its supermarket there, they had the idea to build a flagship store, and have a unique design for it to achieve elevated experience of shopping. They invited architects and interior designers to submit design proposals in a non-open competition. LAB5 architects won because of the look and feel of a market space, with a friendly industrial atmosphere. Luckily later 90% of the original ideas could have been realised.

Located in a shopping mall, this retail can draw mainly three kinds of costumers, so the layout is organised accordingly. One can be shopping very quickly even not entering across the gates. There is a “short route” for quick daily shopping, and a “long route” for weekend buyers. All the forms in the interior are inspired by this flow of costumers.

From the entrance the ceiling is attracting you to the back zone, and then shows different possible ways to go on. The block before cashiers doesn’t have suspended ceiling, and it is just clear and organised.

Due to the condition of the modest internal height, we wanted to gain the space above the suspended ceiling zone, so we didn’t put a ceiling, unless it was really necessary, and also in a free-form way. Where we could we used solid white surface, and where we had to put additional elements (lights, sprinkler, etc.) we used optical ceiling.

Where possible, shelves and counters are forming islands, just as if they were standing at a market.

There are two zones where the ceiling converts into a 3d form by flowing down to the ground. At the bakery products warm feelings are strengthen. At the wine section, the lamellas of the ceiling are continuing down to the ground to form a space of a cellar, and to indicate at this point the quality and the culture of the product. Generally saying, as the ceiling is the element that can be seen from everywhere, it became one of the main elements in orientation and of impression.

The Dutch word “Spar” meaning pinewood gave the idea of using “wood-like” materials at the ceiling or at the winery. It also helps to create a more cosy atmosphere in spite of many industrial elements. We chose acryl (corian) for the finishing of all rounded furniture, as they had to be white, shiny, clean, durable, and supporting the “fluid” effect.

Due to many contradictory specifications we couldn’t apply concrete for the floor as we planned, but the single colour solution of grey tiling is perfect for the goal.

Maybe because of the fact that we are architects and not interior designers originally, we were seeing this retail as being one part of the big shopping mall, so we used the colour brown of its public spaces, on many elements (floor, ceiling, rear of shelves, etc.), and no other colours (beside grey and white).

Supermarket with 2000 m2 of public zone.
Location: Piazza floor of MOM Park (EU – Hungary, 1123 Budapest, Alkotás utca 53.)
Competition: March 2013
Design: May 2013
Construction: June – September 2013

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between curved wooden ribs appeared first on Dezeen.

The interior of Dutch fashion house Viktor & Rolf‘s first flagship store in Paris has been covered in grey felt by French studio Architecture & Associés.

Architecture & Associés was asked to create an unobtrusive design for the duo’s recently opened store on Rue Saint-Honoré, close to Paris’ famous shopping square Place Vendôme.

“We said we would like a store that’s invisible or a store that’s hardly there because often we find store designs very intrusive and just too much,” Viktor & Rolf co-founder Viktor Horsting told Dezeen.

Grey was chosen to line the interior as it provided a simple environment to showcase the duo’s products and is also used in the set designs of the brand’s catwalk shows.

“We wanted to create an environment where the clothes would really stand out,” said Horsting. “Grey is a very good colour as a backdrop because it’s very neutral. It’s a total surreal experience because you’re in an environment that’s entirely made out of fabric, but at the same time it’s something architectural. We like that surrealism.”

The store houses men and women’s ready-to-wear clothing, accessories such as bags and shoes, plus the brand’s line of fragrances.

Neoclassical elements such as arched niches along the walls and a colonnade of arches running over the staircase create shadows to break up the monochrome.

Shelves for displaying products sit in the niches, some of which are illuminated with white light from behind similar to the ceiling panels.

The felt also muffles the sounds of browsing shoppers in an attempt to make the large 650-square-metre store feel more intimate.

“We wanted to emphasise the personal experience of shopping,” Horsting said. “I have to say that it was a little bit of a guess. Of course we thought that the felt would change certain acoustics of the space but we couldn’t really imagine it, so when we were there over the weekend we were glad to hear that the effect was as we had hoped.”

“You’re really by yourself even though it’s a big space, and even though the architecture is rigorous and graphic, it’s not imposing or too grand,” he continued. “It’s really an intimate place. It’s quite beautiful.”

The store opened last week to coincide with Viktor & Rolf’s twentieth anniversary, which was also marked by the house’s return to haute couture in July. The designers will show their Spring 2014 collection in January next year.

Read on for more information from the team behind the design:

The store will be on Rue Saint-Honoré, just a stone’s throw from the Place Vendôme.

The miscellanea of the Viktor & Rolf world will all be available at the boutique: men and women’s ready-to-wear, shoes, the iconic “Bombette” line of bags and leather goods, glasses, accessories and of course, the line of fragrances.

Driven by a taste for the paradoxical, the designers desired an eternal environment for their ever-changing collections, in their own words: “a striking world where every and anybody’s desires or fantasies can be borne upon what we do”.

The innovative design, conceived by Pierre Beucler and Jean-Christophe Poggioli of Architecture & Associés, combines the palatial grandeur of Renaissance Italy with the classicism of the French tradition for a startlingly avant-garde universe.

The spirit of unorthodox innovation that has always driven Viktor & Rolf, whose work has often been characterised by its subtle exploration of scale and shadow, inspired the architects towards a spectral architecture crafted entirely of grey felt. This single-material strategy makes for a phantasmagorical space of shifting apparitions where the uniform surface of the walls, floors and furniture, as a kind of all-enveloping interior skin, creates the effect of complete unity.

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is covered with grey felt appeared first on Dezeen.