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Multicolour tiles form graphic stripes across the exterior of this showroom in Miami, which Esrawe Studio has designed in collaboration with art collective Superflex. More
Artist Sarah Coleman has added a psychedelic twist to Fendi’s distinctive double-F logo for a pop-up cafe she designed for the brand in the Miami Design District.
Stylised as the Fendi Caffe, the cafe designed for the Italian fashion house was located on the outdoor corridor of OTL restaurant in the heart of Miami’s Design District from May to early July.
Coleman manipulated the traditional Fendi logoThe cafe was informed by the brand’s Summer Vertigo capsule collection, which New York artist Sarah Coleman designed in collaboration with Fendi’s creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi.
Defined by yellow and blue tones, the ready-to-wear collection features 90s streetwear references as well as shapes borrowed from 70s psychedelia.
The entrance to the cafe was on an outdoor corridorCentral to the cafe’s bold design was FF Vertigo, Fendi’s iconic FF logo that Coleman and Venturini Fendi warped for the capsule collection and repeated throughout the cafe in a series of bold colours.
The artist explained the influences that prompted her to explore the 70s in her design process.
Ménard Dworkind creates retro coffee bar in downtown Montreal
“When I first began brainstorming, I went straight to my bookshelf and dove into everything I have about the 1970s, a period of spontaneity and extreme self-expression,” Coleman told Dezeen.
“I think the 70s are the greatest fashion era of the 20th century. The spirit of disco, the flowing post-psychedelic art,” she added. “There were so many inspiring aesthetic references to draw upon.”
FF Vertigo was repeated throughout the spaceVisitors to the cafe were greeted with an expanse of bright yellow canopy that contrasted with green potted plants lining the permanent Fendi boutique that is located opposite the pop-up’s site.
FF Vertigo featured as a bold motif throughout, topping the space’s various tables and barstools while more abstract swirly shapes tumbled over the cafe’s yellow walls.
A permanent Fendi boutique is opposite where the pop-up wasOrb-style pendant lights and menus also included FF Vertigo in their design, while a more traditional version of the Fendi logo featured on the cafe’s edible items such as cappuccinos and toast.
Fendi is a luxury fashion house founded in 1925 by Adele and Edoardo Fendi.
Other previous projects by the brand that are informed by the past include a travelling installation for an edition of Design Miami featuring pastel 50s furniture.
The images are courtesy of Fendi.
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Pastel colours and wicker furniture clash playfully with the leopard print fabrics in this Miami hotel, created by American designer Ken Fulk for musician Pharrell Williams. More
American studio MW Works has converted and refurbished a large beachside apartment on Ocean Drive in Miami, Florida, using tropical hardwood and sand-coloured plaster.The studio knocked together two units in a new high-rise building to create a home for a family of six relocating from Seattle.
Living areas feature plaster walls and concrete floors
Materials were chosen to make the most of the quality of light and views of the seashore.
“The irregular surface of the plaster highlights the changing quality of light throughout the day and lends a softness to private spaces,” said MW Works.
Dark tropical hardwood in the dining area
The Ocean Drive apartment’s five bedrooms are placed around the perimeter and decorated in a paler palette, while the kitchen and dining areas in the middle are darker and moodier.
“Bedroom volumes are treated in pale, sandy tones of hand-troweled plaster reflecting natural light deep into the floor plate,” said the studio
“The heart of the unit is clad in dark tropical hardwood with careful detailing emphasising mass and craft.”
Plaster and dark wood in the kitchen
Wide wooden planks form the floors. Handles and light switches are set into the doors and walls to create an uncluttered atmosphere.
In the living room and media room, pale concrete floor slabs and a plastered ceiling bounce light around from the floor to ceiling glazing. Balconies overlook a stretch of beach with Miami’s signature lifeguarding huts.
The home is for a family of six
Gauzy curtains and earthy-coloured rugs continue the highly textured, refined yet beachy aesthetic of the apartment on Ocean Drive.
“Woven baskets and patterned floor coverings add a layer of softness,” said MW Works. “Amongst the neutral canvas varied shades of blue, orange and red respond to the native flora and fauna of southern Florida.”
Bas relief texture in the master bedroom
In the master bedroom, the headboard wall dividing the bed area from the bathroom has a detailed geometric pattern in bas relief.
“This design opportunity grew out of the client’s extensive travel in the middle east and their interest in mathematical patterns,” said MW Works.
“Working with the craftspeople who would install it, we developed a pattern and a fabrication procedure to create an abstracted surface to catch the morning light.”
The Miami apartment has ocean views
In the ceilings, an LED lighting system is programmed to track with the sun and change across the course of the day. At night, one of the bathrooms lights up with an approximation of moonlight.
Based in Seattle, MW Works was founded in 2007 by Steve Mongillo and Eric Walter. The studio often works with natural textures, cladding a cabin in Washington with blackened cedar and using reclaimed timber for a home in Seattle.
Project credits:
Architecture and interiors: MW WorksGeneral contractor: DowbuiltLocal contractor: WoolemsEngineer (MEP): Shamrock EngineeringEngineer (low volt): Visual AcousticsEngineer (structural): PCS Structural SolutionsLighting: NiteoFurnishings: Studio DIAA; Matt Anthony DesignsCarved Countertops: The Vero StonePlaster (walls, master headboard): Cathy Connor Studio CWood (casework, floor, ceiling): DowbuiltMetal (casework, hardware, patinas): DowbuiltInterior landscape garden: FormanetaCustom concrete: John DietrichMetals: Argent
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Fashion designer Virgil Abloh and AMO director Samir Bantal have designed the Off-White flagship store in Miami Design District to be a fulfilment centre and a multipurpose events space. Abloh, who owns the brand Off-White, and Bantal, director of architecture firm OMA’s research arm AMO, designed the store to rethink how physical shops should operate amid the growing popularity of digital shopping.
“We’re niche entities, AMO, Off-White, Samir and myself, so we’re able to sort of wear our heart on our sleeve or our brain on our sleeve,” Abloh told Dezeen. “The first slide that Samir sent for the development was like, is shopping relevant?”
“If we’re able to kind of fulfil our needs by ordering a lot of things online, what’s the role of a physical store?,” Bantal added.
The idea is that the store is flexible, according to Abloh, who citied the annual Art Basel and Design Miami events that take place in Miami as examples of when it could be used to host a variety of activities, like art and music events, and talks.
“There might be 1,000 people, you know, in key moments of that year where the shop can host a runway show, it can host a talk, it can host a cafe,” Abloh said.
“It’ll be a cafe that extends out into the street, it’ll be what the environment needs it to be rather than the betting on, hey, this square footage needs to be used for retail 24 seven,” he added.
“Who knows, by the time it opens I might turn it into like an Uber delivery of Off-White – that’s the freedom and the fun.”
In response, the store is stripped back to only provide storage space for apparel on sale so it could easily be used for a variety of activities and cultural events.
“We played with the idea of translating the store into a fulfilment center,” Bantal explained. “Fulfillment of not only the monetary transaction you do by buying a product, but also fulfilment in terms of like the engagement you have with a brand, or the aura of a brand.”
“This, of course, being in Miami Design District led to the idea of creating a space that is adjustable and transformable over time,” Bantal continued. “We should be able to kind of compress the retail parts to almost like a storage element in the store, and open the store to a kind of variety of cultural events.”
Located at 127 NE 41 Street, the two-storey store is fronted with an opaque polycarbonate wall on the ground floor that can be pushed back, squeezing the storage of the apparel to the rear and opening the front to the street.
“You almost push everything that is retail and compress it in the space behind and then of course, ultimately it ends up in storage,” said Bantal. “While the space in front of that facade is completely open and free and can be used for any function.”
Above the moveable wall is the word Shop with a red cross in front – a tongue-in-cheek nod to the concept behind the project.
“This is the first Off White store to have a facade you know, that street level so the expression, the signage, you know, as the words Shop is a shop, but then has like, an X through the middle, and it’s very, like monolithic,” said Abloh. “The face of the concept is expressed on the facade.”
Inside, the team aimed to continue to the theme of the fulfilment centre through a stripped-back industrial aesthetic – including floors rendered in lightly stained concrete, walls lined in corrugated metal and mesh ceiling panels.
Off-White apparel will be displayed on either stainless steel shelving or black marquina and white Carrara marble rails. All the furniture is placed on wheels or is collapsible so it can be moved about to accommodate events.
The pared-back style acts as a backdrop to a series of artworks that will be installed in the store and the bold electric blue stair that leads to the first floor. On this level, the brand intends to host more intimate events like dinner parties.
Abloh, who is also the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection, founded his Off-White brand as a ready-to-wear streetwear label in 2012. He previously teamed up with Bantal to design Figures of Speech, a retrospective exhibition of his career at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA).
The store joins a number of fashion flagships in Miami Design District, which Craig Robins transformed from a formerly neglected area into the hub for design boutiques, luxury fashion brands and art galleries.
Others include Joseph, which London firm Sybarite design with a spiral black staircase, Christian Louboutin, which is covered in tree bark, Dior, which has a boutique sheathed in curved white concrete panels, and Tom Ford, which is housed in a pleated concrete shop designed by ArandaLasch.
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